Re: GR translation: that are implicit in this machine’s design

jochen stremmel jstremmel at gmail.com
Tue Mar 3 03:21:47 CST 2015


>The thing that "are implicit in this machine’s design" is the music, is
that correct? <

I don't understand your question but perhaps what you mean.
"that" refers to the loudspeakers, and "this machine" is that special
pinball machine with the Cancan dancers, is as I read it.


2015-03-03 9:14 GMT+01:00 Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>:

> I believe you are correct, sir.  But the question then is, why is
> "implicit in this machine's design"?  I'm done no small amount of
> reading on sound, recording, broadcasting, amplification, et al., +
> when I think, what's implicit in, say, the latter, is crooning. The
> microphone + amplification enabled the projection of soft vocals (like
> the megaphone before it; vs., say, operatic, or even Broadway vocals;
> recall that Bing Crosby was a big investor in recording technologies,
> esp. in the wake of the postwar appropriation of Nazi recording
> technologies).  Offenbach, esp. the (nigh unto
> customary/stereotypical) piece most likely here, tends to be anything
> but.  But I imagine here, the music is being played from a recording
> (a 78rpm record), and amplified. And, of course, "loud" is "implicit"
> in an amplifier's/sound system's "design," so ...
>
> Relatively recent (though hardly exhaustive, or, necessarily,
> immediately the "best," or, @ least, relevant  [I'm just waking back
> up during a TCM Lord of the Rings marathon, so ...], on the subject,
> though well worth reading nonetheless) reading:
>
> Electric Sounds
> Technological Change and the Rise of Corporate Mass Media
> Steve J. Wurtzler
>
> "But what role would this new media play in society? Celebrants saw an
> opportunity for educational and cultural uplift; critics feared the
> degradation of the standards of public taste. Some believed acoustic
> media would fulfill the promise of participatory democracy by better
> informing the public, while others saw an opportunity for
> manipulation. The innovations of this period prompted not only a
> restructuring and consolidation of corporate mass media interests and
> a shift in the conventions and patterns of media consumption but also
> a renegotiation of the social functions assigned to mass media forms."
>
> http://cup.columbia.edu/book/electric-sounds/9780231136761
>
> "In a book that has frequently been compared with Walter Benjamin’s
> Arcades Project, Kracauer uses the life and work of Offenbach to
> assemble a penetrating portrayal of Second Empire Paris. By examining
> the superficiality and mystification of collective experience,
> Kracauer provides the reader with a revelatory “physiognomy” of social
> reality itself. Offenbach’s immensely popular operettas have long been
> seen as part of the larger historical amnesia and escapism in the
> aftermath of 1848. But Kracauer insists that Offenbach’s productions
> have to be understood as more than simply glittering distractions. The
> fantasy realms of his operettas, occurring amid the urban renewal of
> Baron Haussmann and the fanfare of Universal Expositions, were on the
> one hand fully continuous with the unreality of Napoleon III’s
> imperial masquerade, but on the other made a mockery of the pomp and
> pretenses surrounding the apparatuses of power. His music “originated
> in an epoch in which social reality had been banished by the Emperor’s
> orders, and for many years it flourished in the gap that was left.”
> Kracauer shows how Offenbach’s dream worlds were embedded with layers
> of utopian content that ultimately was an indictment of the
> fraudulence and corruption of the present."
>
> http://www.zonebooks.org/titles/KRAC_JAC.html
>
> ... there may be some Bigger Mechanism(s) being referred to (as well) ...
>
> Hm ...
>
> On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 1:29 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > V584.19-27   . . . well here come these cancan girls now, Folies-Bergeres
> > maenads, moving in for the kill, big lipstick smiles around blazing
> > choppers, some Offenbach galop come jigging in now out of the
> loudspeakers
> > that are implicit in this machine’s design, long gartered legs kicking
> out
> > over the agony of this sad spherical permanent AWOL, all his companions
> in
> > the chute vibrating their concern and love, feeling his pain but
> helpless,
> > inert without the spring, the hustler’s hand, the drunk’s masculinity
> > problems, the vacuum hours of a gray cap and an empty lunchbox, . . .
> >
> > The thing that "are implicit in this machine’s design" is the music, is
> that
> > correct?  I know which piece of music is being referred to, I'm just a
> > little bit confused by the sentence structure.
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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