STetc - ch 7, 28 – Popcorn!

[Robin Landseadel]

Michael Bailey:

So much going on!

Robin: Yes, one of my favorite chapters in ST, full of action and philosophy and movie
references, but let me start by asking this question: what, exactly, does popcorn signify in this
book?

There are two scenes set in a movie theater, “Dracula” is a real movie, and the symbolic
meaning is immediately clear and stays that way throughout the book—Vampires, predatory
capitalism, “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism", usw.

Dracula:

“I don’t want your money, I want that silver screen as I share a
romantic bucket of popcorn with the man who—or let me put it
another way…” Suddenly looking nervous. Hicks had an idea
why, though he wished he didn’t.

“Hmm, well, OK, but this picture is supposed to be kind of terrifying,
so promise if you get scared you’ll come sit on my lap.”

So they rode into Chicago, and were spared any Outfit-related
violence, but what there was was Count Dracula, big as a movie
screen, once or twice during whose activities it was Hicks who
considered jumping into April’s lap. By the time it was over she’d
eaten six cubic feet of popcorn and was using his tie to wipe the
butter off her fingers with.

“Romantic enough for you?”
ST pg. 46

On the other hand, the Squeezita Thickly episode is of a fictional movie, this character being
Shirley Temple in all but name. I can think of various ways Shirley Temple fits into the world of
Shadow Ticket, but popcorn? In the case of both movies, popcorn is consumed to obvious
excess, a shared experience. Why is there this emphasis on popcorn?

“Bigger Than Yer Stummick”:

“Enjoying that popcorn, there,” Daphne observes, “and the lights aren’t hardly down yet.”

“Mighty unusual taste, besides the paprika, I mean, it’s not butter exactly—”

“It’s goose fat. Normally it’d be restaurant lard, but now and then, special movies call for special
recipes.”

“Aahm-hmng!” through a mouthful of giant exploded kernels fiery with erős paprika, drenched in
goose grease, vanishing by the fistful till soon, shamelessly, Bruno has started grabbing at
Daphne’s popcorn as well.

“Here now, none of that—” batting his hand away.
218/219


This is what I wrote previously on Squeezita Thickly:

ST Squeezita Thickly https://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/2026-May/223375.html

It turns out, the relation of popcorn, the talkies and the Great Depression is historically well
documented:

. . . "Movie theaters wanted nothing to do with popcorn," Smith
says, "because they were trying to duplicate what was done in
real theaters. They had beautiful carpets and rugs and didn't want
popcorn being ground into it." Movie theaters were trying to
appeal to a highbrow clientele, and didn't want to deal with the
distracting trash of concessions—or the distracting noise that
snacking during a film would create.
 
When films added sound in 1927, the movie theater industry
opened itself up to a much wider clientele, since literacy was
no longer required to attend films (the titles used early silent films
restricted their audience). By 1930, attendance to movie theaters
had reached 90 million per week. Such a huge patronage created
larger possibilities for profits—especially since the sound pictures
now muffled snacks—but movie theater owners were still hesitant
to bring snacks inside of their theaters.
 
The Great Depression presented an excellent opportunity for both
movies and popcorn. Looking for a cheap diversion, audiences
flocked to the movies. And at 5 to 10 cents a bag, popcorn was
a luxury that most people were able to afford. Popcorn kernels
themselves were a cheap investment for purveyors, and a $10 bag
could last for years. If those inside the theaters couldn't see the
financial lure of popcorn, enterprising street vendors didn't miss a
beat: they bought their own popping machines and sold popcorn
outside the theaters to moviegoers before they entered the theater.
As Smith explains, early movie theaters literally had signs hung
outside their coatrooms, requesting that patrons check their
popcorn with their coats. Popcorn, it seems, was the original
clandestine movie snack.
 
Beyond wanting to maintain appearances, early movie theaters
weren't built to accommodate the first popcorn machines; the
theaters lacked proper ventilation. But as more and more
customers came to the theater with popcorn in hand, owners
couldn't ignore the financial appeal of selling the snack. So they
leased "lobby privileges" to vendors, allowing them to sell their
popcorn in the lobby of their theater (or more likely on a bit of
street in front of the theater) for a daily fee. Vendors didn't
complain about this arrangement—selling popcorn outside the
theater widened their business potential, as they could sell to
both moviegoers and people on the street.
 
Eventually, movie theater owners realized that if they cut out
the middleman, their profits would skyrocket.  For many
theaters, the transition to selling snacks helped save them from the
crippling Depression. In the mid-1930s, the movie theater business
started to go under. "But those that began serving popcorn and
other snacks," Smith explains, "survived." Take, for example, a
Dallas movie theater chain that installed popcorn machines in 80
theaters, but refused to install machines in their five best theaters,
which they considered too high class to sell popcorn. In two years,
the theaters with popcorn saw their profits soar; the five theaters
without popcorn watched their profits go into the red. Eventually,
movie theater owners came to understand that concessions were
their ticket to higher profits, and installed concession stands
in their theaters. . .

Why Do We Eat Popcorn at the Movies? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-do-we-eat-popcorn-at-the-movies-475063/
 
MB: Ekrexophilia - according to AI (but, yeah, f*ck AI) the
correct spelling should be "ekrexiophilia" and isn't specifically
confined to explosions, but extends to "a paraphilia where
an individual experiences sexual arousal from seeing bizarre
objects, destruction, or strange anomalies." (could also
thereby stand in for a term for Slothrop's conditioned condition?)

R: Sounds legit.

MB: One of those "who's talking?" moments:
 
(w/r/t ekrexophilia) Daphne: New one on me, thought I'd heard 'em all

R: Lew Basnight might have something to say:

Lew had a look at the two of them. His rescuers did not on first
inspection seem to offer much deterrent to further bomb-roller
interest in his person. Trilby hats, velvet knee-britches, fringe
haircuts, gunbelts adorned with avalanche lilies and wild primrose.
The Oscar Wilde influence, he guessed. Since the famous poet
had returned to England from his excursion to America, brimming
with enthusiasm for the West and Leadville in particular, all kinds
of flamboyant adventurers had been showing up in these
mountains. Then again, where else did he have to go to anymore,
now that he’d crossed over what had just been revealed with such
clarity as the terrible American divide, between hunter and prey?
Against the Day pg. 185

Hicks experiences a very similar thing.

Note that Lew had developed a ‘Cyclomite,’ habit, and that both Lew and Hicks are blown off
their life-paths via explosives and their overall karma improves in the process. In Lew's case,
due to being transferred into what appears to be another dimension thanks to the power of
dynamite. In Hicks case thanks to an extraordinarily near miss that ultimate lands him in
Budapest just as the holocaust gets under way. 
 
MB: Somebody: Shh!  (who? Bruno? Other audience member(s)?)

R: Other audience members, Shirley—I mean Squeezita—is about to do a genre-bending
scene:
 
MB: Somebody: Vanilla 'or' chocolate, Yer Excellency? 'Or'? Really?
I could always just gobble 'em both up (etc) — have we segued into
the movie dialogue?

R: We have segued into the movie dialog:

“Vanilla ‘or’ chocolate, Yer Excellency? ‘Or’? Really? I could always
just gobble ’em both up, couldn’t I, one right after the other, ’n’ see
how ya like that.”

“Oh but I say—”

“Who’s gonna stop me? You?”

“Well, upon my word.”

“Do you mind? I’m in a hurry and I’m hungry.”

Now, if you know anything about Shirley Temple—and seriously; why should you?—then you
know that Shirley Temple saved Fox Films. The first film where she was featured was "Stand Up
and Cheer":

https://youtu.be/6yh4Fs4F4zE?si=AHvRbOWg9_0H5ikC

Shirley Temple, age 5, sings and dances!:

https://youtu.be/CYNopvVbYLw?si=f_sujL3Eb05JvUf0

If you can "stummick" it, here's the whole kit and kaboodle:

https://youtu.be/FqE0IlRsndM?si=QYBF4ze-ZCmeR4kl

. . . . President Franklin Roosevelt appoints a theatrical producer
as the new Secretary of Amusement in order to cheer up an
American public still suffering through the Depression. The
new secretary soon runs afoul of political lobbyists out to
destroy his department. . . .

Stand Up and Cheer! (1934) - Filmaffinity https://www.filmaffinity.com/en/film769153.html 

Governmental interference with the entertainment industry! A Communist threat to our very way of life!

A quick thought, "Dracula", set in Transylvania, watched in Chicago and denoting vampiric
greed, Bigger Than Yer Stummick (1931), watched in Budapest (land of pastry, apparently),
denoting abundance in excess and spycraft:

The setting is someplace vaguely outer European, not Russia exactly,
everybody talking with a different foreign accent, and even more
peculiar, for a Squeezita Thickly movie, now and then also shooting
at each other, both semi- and fully-automatically, not always in play,
plus setting off spherical anarchist-style bombs which appear to wreck
one expensive set after another, causing Bruno, each time one of them
goes off, to shiver agreeably, which Daphne can’t help noticing.
pg. 220

So, the setting is very much the eastern side of the remnants of what was once the Austro-
Hungarian empire. Somehow, I'm seeing this as suggesting a Soviet propaganda film:

“Do you mind? I’m in a hurry and I’m hungry.” Turned out in stylish
little Soviet-inspired uniforms, Squeezita it seems has recently been
appointed Food Commissar of a recently installed People’s Republic,
where she lives with her Daddy (Wallace Beery), a chef with a big
soup-soaked mustache and top-heavy chef’s toque who keeps
drifting out of the frame on secret missions for the new regime . . .
pg. 220/221

“That funny Italian guy who kept hollering at everybody—you think
that was supposed to be Mussolini?”

“Everybody’s afraid of the Duce, even in Hollywood they might not
want to offend him.”
pg. 221

The first sound-on film "Movietone" release was a newsreel that focused on Italy with a
message to his American friends from Mussolini. 

The very first.