Paranoia & Pleasure: It's the video games, stupid
alice wellintown
alicewellintown at gmail.com
Fri Dec 28 21:04:13 CST 2012
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14462759
http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/9781441966292-c1.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1202939-p174003059
On Friday, December 28, 2012, alice wellintown wrote:
>
> 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>
>> > To: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> a
>> > Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> > 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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