BEg2 Chapter 4: Pow! Pow!

[Joseph Tracy]

I also enjoyed the humor the 1st couple times around.  Still can see it, even enjoy it that way, understand what is being said here; I just feel there is something else that is disturbing in these joke fantasies of eliminating everyone who annoys you, and that fits into a pattern and direction that really is dangerous.   This  congressman Gosar publishing a video cartoon of killing AOC.  I assume there are a lot of republicans who think it's funny and if she was actually shot would make the classic liberal argument that fantasies have nothing to do with actual behavior. Not so sure myself.  After 911 this same kind of fantasy, some humor based, will be pointed at anyone who ‘looks’ middle eastern, including sikhs not remotely musim or middle eastern, and innocent people will be murdered, both by the state with large public consent and by crazed individuals with fantasies of protecting america. Cancel culture is a slightly more subtle variation, usually without any attempt at humor. I see Pynchon walking a fine line in many areas including using his audience's human appetites for humor, porn, caricature to get us to think twice  about those appetites and where they can lead. So not denying the enjoyability of fringe humor by any means,  just pesonally finding another level not that far below the surface. 


> On Nov 18, 2021, at 9:00 AM, Allen Ruch <quail at shipwrecklibrary.com> wrote:
> 
> I just wanted to add that some of Chapter 4 is pretty funny. While I am not saying that Pynchon isn’t engaging in deeper satire, there’s also a lot of humor here, too. For instance, the videogame. There’s not a lot of New Yorkers who haven’t fantasized about eliminating the kinds of people who serve as “targets” in the game. To me, it’s a laugh-out-loud moment:
> 
> ++++++++++
> 
> “Come on,” sez Otis, “let’s just cruise around.” Off they go on a tour of the inexhaustible galleries of New York annoyance, zapping loudmouths on cellular phones, morally self-elevated bicycle riders, moms wheeling twins old enough to walk lounging in twin strollers, “One behind the other, we let them off with a warning, but not this one, look, side by side so nobody can get past? forget it.” Pow! Pow! The twins go flying, all smiles, above New York and into the Kiddy Bin. Passersby are largely oblivious to the sudden disappearances except for Christers, who think it’s the Rapture. “Guys,” Maxine astonished, “I had no idea— Wait, what’s this?” She has spotted a line jumper at a bus stop. Nobody paying attention. H&Kwoman to the rescue! “All right, how do I do this?” Otis is happy to instruct, and before you can say “Be more considerate,” the pushy bitch has been despatched and her children dragged to safety.
> 
> “Way to go Mom, that’s a thousand points.”
> 
> +++++++++++
> 
> I mean, this shit is funny, because it’s genuine. (“Morally self-elevated bicycle riders!”) Sure, talk about desensitization, drone strike training, dehumanizing young men so they can kill; fine—but this is also pure Mel Brooks here, and anyone who lives in a big city understands “Pow! Pow!”
> 
> —Quail, big fan of “Death Race 2000” (1975)
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l