Paranoia & Pleasure: It's the video games, stupid

[alice wellintown]

In a smart essay on Vineland, Richard Brurket argues that VL insists
that the combination of paranoia and pleasure is no accident, but is a
cultivated and solicited response to the force of law in America. The
post-60s crew suffer from a sickness far more insidious than the one
that Benny and Stencil searched for and avoided, an approach that is a
close cousin to the paranoid pleasures of the post 60s boomers and the
violent and cynical enthusiams of their children, and it share a
family resemblance to the mindless pleasures of Slothrop's paranoid
trippings through the zone, but it is darker because it involves a
resignation, a surrender to the forces of and violent abuse of law.
This cynical certitude, a sense that the law is what is, a violent
force that one can more avoid nor challange, causes the boomers'
children to reject the movements, peace, civil rights, feminist...of
their parents and join the violent supression of those who would
challange the violent enforcement of law. So King and Park, though not
present in the novel, are tossed under the bus. Popular culture,
delivered by the Tube solicits and manufactures a consent, a paranoid
pleasure in the voyeur who watches the violent abuse of others by law
enforement. Prarie's boyfriend, the violence enthusiast who has his
finger on the pulse of the young generation sees this trend not a a
danger to democracy or to civil rights but as a business opportunity.
Yes, it's the video games.