BEg2 Chapter 4: Pow! Pow!

[Mark Kohut]

As someone in the Read wrote: In sanitized online games, where blowing
people away is bloodless. Drone training
for the next generation.

On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 1:53 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>