STetc ch 25 – At the Tropikus

[Robin Landseadel]

Michael Bailey:
 
There is so much banter in ch 25 and 26, I can't even begin to process it as of yet.
 
Probably have to watch some of those Pre-Code movies Robin's posting about.

Robin: Ok, let’s. Chapter 25. To paraphrase and invert the meaning of a favorite Suzanne Vega
tune, let’s look into the past, let’s see how it’s been done. I only just—like yesterday—
discovered the Tubi streaming service, free with commercials. Best source of precode movies
I’ve found so far. The commercial to content ratio reminds me of watching KHJ/KCOP/KTLA in
Altadena circa 1965, 40 seconds of ads every 15 minutes or so, nothing that will destroy one’s
attention.

Which reminds me of this scene:

Baby Igor’s Song

’Gainst the Hun and the Turk, never once do we shirk,
My daddy, my doggie and me.
Through the perilous years, like the Three Musketeers,
We will stick just as close as can be.
Soon our sub’s periscope’ll aim for Constantinople,
As again we set hopeful to sea;
Once more unto the breach, for those boys on the beach,
Just my daddy, my doggie and me.

Then there was a musical bridge, featuring the fisherman and his
instrument, then the young Metzger took it from the top while his
aging double, over Oedipa’s protests, sang harmony. Either he
made up the whole thing, Oedipa thought suddenly, or he bribed
the engineer over at the local station to run this, it’s all part of a
plot, an elaborate, seduction, plot. O Metzger.

“You didn’t sing along,” he observed.

“I didn’t know,” Oedipa smiled. On came a loud commercial for
Fangoso Lagoons, a new housing development west of here.

“One of Inverarity’s interests,” Metzger noted. It was to be laced
by canals with private landings for power boats, a floating social
hall in the middle of an artificial lake, at the bottom of which lay
restored galleons, imported from the Bahamas; Atlantean
fragments of columns and friezes from the Canaries; real human
skeletons from Italy; giant clamshells from Indonesia—all for the
entertainment of Scuba enthusiasts. A map of the place flashed
onto the screen, Oedipa drew a sharp breath, Metzger on the
chance it might be for him looked over. But she’d only been
reminded of her look downhill this noontime. Some immediacy
was there again, some promise of hierophany: printed circuit,
gently curving streets, private access to the water, Book of the Dead. . . 
CoL49, pgs. 22, 23

KHJ, channel 9, was an “RKO” station, not connected to any of the networks but connected to
big film libraries. They had the “Million Dollar Movie”, one flick they would play the whole week,
advertisements for local businesses, most famously Ralph Williams Ford.

I don’t think they played this one:

https://youtu.be/vh3Di3LY6Ns?si=I2gJv9D-DDhHWMST

Chapter 25 is jam-packed with specific and  inferred movie references, many of which will slide
right by most readers. But more than that, what we are reading, at this moment, is a movie, a
precode musical.

What really grabbed me about The Crying of Lot 49, that thing it does that practically requires
obsessive reading to de-crypt, is how the true meaning requires understanding the terminology,
the meanings of words in a specific time, the local context. Shadow Ticket has more of that
going on than CoL49.

We are at . . . the Tropikus nightclub, in Nagymező utca, the Broadway of Budapest . . .

According to this article, Budapest is the nightlife capital of Europe, many crazy nightclubs
designed to send you onto some insane movie set:

Budapest Nightlife Guide: Ruin Bars, Clubs, Rooftop Bars & Parties https://untoldhungary.com/budapest-nightlife-guide/

So, this sort of enterprise should come as no surprise:

. . . Tropikus, an all-night dance-cabaret on a nautical theme in the
metropolis of a landlocked artifact of Trianon, whatever it might
answer to emotionally, must’ve looked to owners Imi and Jóska
like a surefire ticket, especially with commercial real estate so cheap
at the moment.
 
Waitresses in abbreviated sailor-girl getups back and forth with
Unicum boilermakers and fruit-heavy house specials in coconut
and conch shells, ceramic mermaids with purple Cellophane
drinking straws emerging from the tops of their heads, smoke
hanging like tropical weather. As Imi works the tables, making
with the repartee, Jóska attends to the cash drawers, the liquor
supply, the security, the girls . . .
ST pg 188

Looks like a movie set to me. Looks like the mise-en scène for a complicated dance routine.

The more one watches these insane precode musicals the more easily one can see how
they have been influencing Pynchon right from the start. However, I doubt he has ever
come as close to the true insanity of precode musicals as he has in this scene in Shadow
Ticket, chapter 25, pages  189/190. I’ve flagged this one before, but it might be my favorite
passage in Shadow Ticket so it’s worth a repeat:

The band, camouflaged in the scenery here, itching to go
Latin all evening, impatient little raps and flourishes among
the percussion and brass, apparently misplaced beats in
the waltzes and foxtrots till at last helplessly collapsing into
a Latin American fanfare, conga drums suddenly apporting
in hot from the tropics along with claves, güiros, timbales,
and cowbells, and sure enough here’s Daphne Airmont,
same lengthy red flow of hair Hicks remembers, backless
evening dress, arm-length gloves, long strides, apparently
solo tonight, straight to the bandstand where she’s ushered
to a microphone, takes off one glove, scratches the mike with
a fingernail, puts the glove back on, and with a practiced
swing-vocalist bounce right in on the beat—

 Yes…here…comes…
                                             that…
Strange-ly trop-i-cal rhyth-m!
Yes! Strangely, hauntingly so—no
Mat-ter how, gring-go, you
Might-think-you are, some-
-thin lights up ’n’ goes “Bing-go!”
and you’re suddenly far…far
                                                         away, at some
un-expec-ted fi-esta,
just as syn-copated-as sin—one
Min-ute you’re Ang-glo, next
Min-ute-you’re not,
The stars seem to hang low,
The or-chestra’s hot—
Tell ya what—
                                              take

 [bridge]

a-break from Prohi-
-bi-tion, wave
hasta la vista to the Feds—
one li’l te-
-qui-la inter-
-mis-sion,
Pretty soon you’re Lupe Velez! like
the fella sez, it’s a pleas-
                                                    -ure steppin

Right, a-long, with-that rhyth-m—that
Pan-Ame-ri-can jive, dive-
-in into the deep end
lettin ’em know, you’re, alive…
down where fate is philanthropical…
mis-apprehensions mic-ro, scop-ical…
not-to mention all that tropical,
strange-ly trop-i-cal, rhyth-m!

The room by now lit up in some unearthly color process,
timed in a faraway film lab so as to present an outward
and visible sign of some strange underacknowledged
link between Hungary and tropical Brazil, energetic
dancers in vivid flashes of parrot colors and fanciful hats
gliding elaborately by, camera angles growing dutched
and dizzy, as it all goes sweeping down a long depth of
focus away toward, and perhaps at last funneling into,
an elaborate ladies’ lounge or toilet, and who knows what
further vistas of streamlined modernity…
ST pgs.189,190
 
Note that “Flying Down to Rio” had a scene hand-painted in color, apparently. Can’t find it, what
with multiple colorized versions. This is a 100% precode musical, a script laid out with camera
instructions for specific varieties of camera angles and motions—“Dutched” verbs the “Dutch” in
“Dutch Angle”, the tilt of the camera to produce a diagonal frame—there's exotic film
processing, and a goofy Latin-flavoured song culminating in a sequence straight out of
Busby Berkeley.

I saw three musicals this week, two were precode, all three are backstage musicals, one was a
Busby Berkeley creation.

“Flying Down to Rio” has a lot of ingredients that apply to this scene when Daphne gets
together again with Hicks for the first time since that speedboat run jammed their karma
together, perhaps permanently. Flying Down to Rio is the screen debut of the
Astaire/Rodgers dance team, perhaps the most iconic of all time. In the movie, Astaire plays
Fred Ayres, co-leader of a band that gets a gig in Rio, Ginger Rodgers plays Honey Hale,
vocalist and all-around good sport. Without getting too deep into the weeds here,
Astaire/Rodgers—really, really white  people with rhythm and fancy dance moves—try their
hand at the local dance craze, the Carioca. One could hardly hope for a better introduction to the pair:

https://youtu.be/i1tRy0fj4II?si=bGii-3QV1heruHVY

Daphne is compared to Norma Shearer while Hicks is compared to Astaire:

. . . By which point they’re dancing, having glided into it from
some everyday moment, like reaching across him for a
cigarette…after no more than four bars of which he can
feel her begin to relax, and unless Hicks wants to start
deliberately stepping on her feet or tripping over his own,
he’s stuck once again with being Oversize Fred Astaire here. . .
ST pg. 191

This is Fred Astaire’s solo film debut from “Flying Down To Rio”:

https://youtu.be/SXlnuihtUpg?si=ftsioSDO7-s1eG6T

Hicks must be some kind of a hoofer!

. . . By the time the band takes a break she has a peculiar look
in her eye. Speculative.

“What?”

“You’re not what you seem.”

“Maybe it’s you makin me look good.”

“Ever dance professionally?”

“Back in Chicago, ballroom act, didn’t work out.”

“Personal issues, artistic differences?”

“Gang war.”
ST pgs. 191/192

“Footlight Parade” also relates and is alluded to in “Bigger Than Yer Stummick”.

. . . Soon enough, however, the music has shifted grimly minor,
as overhead now looms a giant soup ladle, about to dip down
and scoop up one or more of the aqua-lovelies, as if, in the
distant world from which the ladle has descended, they are
considered edible delicacies. The girls cast theatrical glances
skyward, scream, squeal, submerge in the soup trying to
escape, yet smiling all through the shot, having just the
greatest fun, while pretending to croon, in tight inside-the-
octave harmony.

Sir-loin steaks-from-the bar-
-be-cue—
Hot fudge sundaes ’n’ lob-sters too, It’s my
own business what I’ve been
Ee-at-ing,
Never mind how much I ate—
Long as you keep yer lunch-hooks a-
-way from my plate, when we’re Eea-ea-ting!
ST pg.220

That scene visually paraphrases “By a Waterfall” from “Footlight Parade.”

The third Backstage Musical I watched was “All That Jazz”. Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz” is
about the backstage turmoil of a genius Broadway/Hollywood music/film director’s next big
show. Like “Footlight Parade”, “All That Jazz” shows every aspect of a production pushed to the
limit, dancers in punishing rehearsals, songs being developed to tight deadlines, no sleep for
anyone. But “All That Jazz” is a musical tragedy. Joe Gideon pushes himself with
pills and booze and broads to a heart attack that directly leads to his death. We’re present
for his final hallucinations, a spectacular musical finale to end all spectacular musical
finales. The closing music is Ethel Merman’s iconic “There’s No Business Like Show Business”
It doesn't specifically relate to Shadow Ticket, but it sure is Pynchonian:

https://youtu.be/4JlPK8Rrd1A?si=Ynmh7jy_hIy6wxWq