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

[alice wellintown]

It was Zoyd's generation that said not to trust folks over thirty, but here
he is, in an ironic situation, for he is now over thirty and must put his
trust in the younger generation, must trust his daughter and her boyfriend.
The boyfriend has just tried to con Zoyd into co-signing a loan for a
business deal that the youthful violence enthusiast hopes to make a killing
from by capitalizing on the prejudice and ethnocentric ignorance of the
tube conditioned, and by further recruiting and manufacturing these
prejudices in the impressionable children customers who will play at
killing those deemed undesirable. Yeah, but Zoyd, while he can't keep up
with the slick marketing schemes, sees what the ad has in mind, figures it
for teen wasteland rebellion against his peace loving parents and, does a
sold for the fellow musician by helping him land a gig. This is, of course,
quite ironic cause his daughter won't trust the old pot head, will run to
Hector and Brock, will sit thru the reels of mom and he 24fps and ignore
the real, her old man. Like her boy friend, she Getz her view of the 60's
from film, from reel not real. And, all that virtual dehumanizing, all that
video view of others, well...it makes killing like deleting a file s all,
like just like playing a part on tv. Like a rocket with your bad on it in
the theatre in the theater is all just a violent theme park. What does Eno
say? Here come the warm drones or something like that.


On Friday, December 28, 2012, Joseph Tracy wrote:

> I for one, don't buy this. It is a self serving generational
> oversimplification as stupid as the shit-head who said don't trust anyone
> over thirty. Alice hates Vineland and interprets it to accord with that
> spite. Is Prairie's friend really a violence enthusiast or just another all
> american entrepreneur.? Who does he injure? Which rocker doesn't want
> success? Every art form is also a business enterprise and most art forms
> and many serious and respected artists deal with the violence motif.
>
> I don't like violent fantasy games. I think they are dangerous , but I
> have heard some powerful rebuttals of my discomfort , essentially that
> fantasy is better as an outlet than real violence for intractable human
> urges. If it's the video games it is also movies, TV  an entire
> entertainment culture built around violence.
>   I agree that we are faced with the erosion of the democratic concept of
> the universal rule of law, but it is far more the work of real-politik
> enthusiasm for the violently obtained pleasures of capitalism backed by
> high tech war, than it is some particular generational corruption which
> amounts to the old bullshit complaint about the coming generation.
> Anyway I thought some oppositional thoughts and questions were in order.
>
> On Dec 24, 2012, at 3:01 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
> > I like this.....one might say that in Vineland the 60s boomers gave up
> acting as full Jeffersonian-ideal, 60s ideal, citizens
> > and fell into an either-or life....
> >
> >
> >
> > From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com <javascript:;>>
> > To: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com <javascript:;>> a
> > Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org <javascript:;>>
> > Sent: Monday, December 24, 2012 1:42 PM
> > Subject: Re: Paranoia & Pleasure: It's the video games, stupid
> >
> > These interpretations are interesting, and seem to have merit.  Too bad
> the novel doesn't speak so clearly.  Should we really need a Brurket to
> divine Pynchon's intentions?
> >
> > On Monday, December 24, 2012, alice wellintown 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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