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

[Mach Thomberi]

Gawd blaw blaww lunatic blabblaw.

Did you say something, Blaw?   I wouldn't think so, only to be watching who
beings who think they are something, more than that, no nothing.


On Mon, Dec 24, 2012 at 1:14 PM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com
> wrote:

> 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.
>
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