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

[David Morris]

Yes!
Ideologues love simplicity.  Reduction leads to parody, Postmodernism.
Complexity not addressed, only played with.
David Morris

http://www.arch.mcgill.ca/prof/sijpkes/arch374/winter2001/mwildm/

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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