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Reader. Gamer. Binary Mystic.
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Thursday, March 25, 2004
I almost had a heart attack last night while I was watching The OC. Actually, The OC was on as background noise. There was a guest spot by Paris Hilton. She appears on screen during some club scene and starts blabbing away with another character from the show. Then she says, "I'm doing my thesis on Magical Realism in America." My ear pricks up because the general banality of this statement struck me. I assumed that she meant the United States and not Latin America. This suspicion was confirmed when she goes to state that she's researching Thomas Pynchon for her thesis, and then she asks if the other character has read Pynthon to which he replies that he has read "The Cying." At this point I think, "Fine. The writers wanted to inject some pseudo-intellectual banter to attempt to flesh out Hilton's shallow character." But here is what sent me spinning. Hilton's character goes on to tell the other character that "Gravity's Rainbow" is Pynchon's opus and continues to talk about the text. So I'm just sitting in bed thinking, "What the hell?!?"
Thomas Pynchon is, in my humble opinion, the greatest living US author we have. I also think that "Gravity's Rainbow" is his key work. (The Crying of Lot 49 can be seen as a precursor to it.) I can't see why the writers of the OC decided to use that bit of dialogue. It is possible that I hold Pynchon so close to my heart that I deam The OC unworthy of even uttering his name. Pynchon is such a cypher to decode that this kind of treatment does not pay him justice. And don't get me started on what is fundamentally wrong with using the terms Magical Realism, America, and Thomas Pynchon in the same discussion. Allusions to Pynchon are rarely used by the media at best, with exception of his only "televised" appearance via The Simpsons. Can this allusion possible hit the mark with The OC's target audience? I dread to think that a herd of teenagers are going to stampede the local Barnes and Noble and pick up Pynthon's works. Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe The OC can work as a postmodern Oprah's Book club and convert a nation of lost youths into readers.
I'm hoping for a Borges reference in the next episode but I won't hold my breath.
8:48 AM
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Last night I saw the second movie this year about the resurrection, Dawn of the Dead. It's a completely different movie than the original, but I must admit that I loved the cameos from cast members from the 1979 film. I'm going to agree with the critics who faulted it for removing the criticism about American Consumerism that was present in the original. But all in all, it was a nice, scary horror flick.
The part that really left me shaken after the film was the concept of surviving in a world striped of all humanity. Zombies aren't necessarily scary in and of themselves, but the idea that you are alone in a world full of them is frightening. The film loosely captured this sense of emptiness and solitude. The video montage at the end was excellent. Without revealing too much, the viewer becomes the camera which is ultimately abandoned, and all that remains is a skewed vision of a tattered world. Maybe I'm just being homocentric.
6:40 AM
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