FINALLY saw Inherent Vice

[alice malice]

http://www.alternet.org/media/why-were-shocked-white-heroin-use

On Friday, March 20, 2015, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:

> Which has only been out here for a week. Figured the 11.50am session
> at my local cinema would be empty but was pleasantly surprised to
> share the session with a handful of elderly folks.
>
> I'm with Mr Monroe - or, at least, if that isn't Pynchon in the
> background of the Topanga scene, it's at least a Pynchon figure
> overseeing the exchange that holds the whole film together for me.
>
> It's a much more coherent work than I'd expected and I think I enjoy
> it more than the novel (which wasn't that much to begin with).
>
> The Golden Fang isn't an ambiguous fog of possibility like it is in
> the novel - it's a very identifiable conspiracy connecting a whole
> bunch of institutions and individuals and power structures and even
> though we (and Doc) only see a small corner of it, it's enough to
> project the larger picture. The players don't even necessarily see
> their position within it (eg Blatnoyd) but we're given more than
> enough dots to join.
>
> And the Fang is clearly a metonym for the America Coy alludes to in
> the aforementioned scene, which is a vertically integrated System that
> hooks its kids with mindless pleasures and then offers them relief
> through equally mindless promises of redemption. Heroin (and the
> Chryskolodon Inst) in the film is totally symbolic of that, as well as
> being an actual part of it.
>
> The film makes explicit how Doc's real investment in all the goings-on
> is to see Amethyst get a parent back. It's the film's emotional payoff
> and to me only really makes sense if the Golden Fang plays out as a
> particular metaphor.
>
> But that altering of the ending, what a misstep.
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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