IVIV (8): Rick Doppel

[Dave Monroe]

   "She sighed didactically.  'But now that he's been all over  the
TV? he has instant and wide credibility.  The police can infiltrate
him into any scene they want.'
   "'You guys have been watching that Mod Squad again....'" (IV, Ch.
8. pp. 122-3)


"sighed didactically"

I dont think I've ever heard it put quite that way before, but ...


"instant and wide credibility"

"The Mod Squad" (1968) TV series 1968-1973

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062589/
http://www.chezgrae.com/modsquad/
http://www.fiftiesweb.com/tv/mod-squad.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0-XrZoHj2k
http://www.tv.com/the-mod-squad/show/677/summary.html

The Mod Squad was a police drama that featured three young, hip, crime
fighters. One White, One Black, One Blonde, was the promotional
hype-line. The casting was intended to appeal to a youthful,
counterculture audience. The basic premise was that the youthful
investigators were offered work fighting crime as an alternative to
being incarcerated themselves. The show's primary gimmick centered on
the three cops using their youthful, hippie personas as a guise to get
close to the criminals they investigated....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mod_Squad

Not to be confused with ...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120757/


"cold-ass ideas"

Why italicize "cold" here?  Meanwhile ...

http://cold-ass-shit.urbanup.com/1265333
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tac6EEpP0kU
http://whiskeyclone.net/ghost/songinfo.php?songID=147


"some special gift for ... betrayal?"

Note teevee promo style phrasing.  And see., e.g., ...

"Who Was Saved?" Families, Snitches and Recuperation in Pynchon's Vineland
Journal article by N. Katherine Hayles; Critique, Vol. 32, 1990

http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=KGJhKgpc93vFNBLmvm2v2V6TMzG0pQSMnPVg2LRsSNXy8c0Mk8Bh!589076928!-1609511957?docId=95172186

Not to mention ...

http://www.thesatirist.com/books/Vineland.html
http://www.notbored.org/vineland.html


Rick Doppel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelg%C3%A4nger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelg%C3%A4nger#In_fiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_doppelg%C3%A4ngers

'Doppel' means 'double' in German and might refer here to the
'doppelganger'-motif or shifting identities in a more general way. The
theme seems to be prominent in this chapter. The films mentioned on
p.115 belong in this context, for example. In Black Narcissus,
Kathleen Byron's character, Sister Ruth, can be seen as the dark
double of Deborah Kerr's Sister Clodagh. In Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet
des Dr. Caligari, the somnambulist Cesare commits crimes when he is
under the hypnotic spell of the title figure; Caligari himself may be
director of a circus attraction or of a psychiatric hospital. In Fritz
Lang's Metropolis, a character called Maria is replaced by a robot.

http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_8#Page_123

"The theme of the ‘double’ has been very thoroughly treated by Otto
Rank  (1914). He has gone into the connections which the ‘double’ has
with  reflections in mirrors, with shadows, with guardian spirits,
with the belief  in the soul and with the fear of death; but he also
lets in a flood of light on the surprising evolution of the idea. For
the 'double’ was originally an insurance against the destruction of
the ego, an ‘energetic denial of the power of death’, as Rank says;
and probably the ‘immortal’ soul was the first ‘double’ of the body.
This invention of doubling as a preservation against extinction has
its counterpart in the language of dreams, which is found of
representing castration by a doubling or multiplication of a genital
symbol. The same desire led the Ancient Egyptians to develop the art
of making images of the dead in lasting materials. Such ideas,
however, have sprung from the soil of unbounded self-love, from the
primary narcissism which dominates the mind of the child and of
primitive man. But when this stage has been surmounted, the ‘double’
reverses its aspect. From having been an assurance of immortality, it
becomes the uncanny harbinger of death."

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~tabitham/uncanny.html