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

[alice wellintown]

http://ojs.stanford.edu/ojs/index.php/intersect/article/download/363/199


On Friday, December 28, 2012, alice wellintown wrote:

> 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 boome
>
>
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