4.1.2 Existential boundary crossings: 
Vineland's ontological flow

As the discussion of "Little Expressionless Animals" and White Noise has shown, the boundary between the inside and the outside of the TV screen is a fragile one. In these works televisual space becomes continuous with the "real" space of the characters. In Vineland there also appear scenes in which characters interact with the tube as if its fictitious worlds directly affected them. Hector is reported to respond to the TV in a bar: "Some movie on channel 86. He was talkin' back to the screen after a while, but I don't think he was loaded or nothin'." (p. 41) Zoyd "toast[s] the screen" (p. 61), and in their divorce proceedings Hector Zuñiga's ex-wife "had named the television [...] as co-respondent, arguing that the Tube was a member of the household, enjoying its own space, [...] addressed and indeed chatted with at lenght by other family members." (p. 348) The tendency to personalize the tube which we encountered in Wallace and DeLillo can thus also be witnessed in Vineland.

Another example of the confusion between televisual and real space is related by Sasha Gates about Prairie as a small child: "'after that, whenever the show came on [i.e. "Gilligan's Island", V. H.], you'd smile and gurgle and rock back and forth, so cute, like you wanted to climb into the television set, and right onto that island'." (p. 368) This reminds one of the small child Wilder in White Noise, who "approached the set and touched her [Babette's] body." The innocent vision of both kids cannot differentiate between an image and its real-life referent. Another instance of this "innocent vision" can be found in Vineland: "When the commercials came on, the birds, with voices otherwordly pure, would sing back at them, sometimes even when none were on." (p. 82) For Wilder, Prairie and the birds there is no conflict between nature and its representation, TV for them is perfectly continuous with reality.

It is only when the child grows up and learns to distinguish between reality and its various representations that the relation between image and referent loses its innocence. For Jack Gladney, the broadcasted image of his wife is deeply ambiguous, as if she has entered another ontological realm in which he has no place. The gap between him and his televised wife is just the flipside of a split occurring in his perception of himself. In his confrontation with Willie Mink imminent fears are continually relativized by televisual formulas which help to contain the real but at the same time distance Jack from himself. The more he tries to bring simulation and reality into perfect correlation, the more they seem to drift apart: the image of Babette "was but wasn't her," the shooting of Mink is but isn't a TV-scene.

The shooting of Weed Atman in Vineland in many ways resembles the "showdown" between Gladney and Mink. Both scenes are climaxes of their respective novels and both prominently feature a gun. Most startling though, is the "split personality" with which both main protagonists witness these scenes: "Frenesi understood that she had taken at last one irreversible step to the side of her life, and that now, as if on some unfamiliar drug, she was walking around next to herself, haunting herself, attending a movie of it all." (p. 237) Instead of having all their senses together, both Frenesi and Gladney appear to be in a drugged, hallucinatory state (i.e. "as if on some unfamiliar drug," Gladney's sharp impressions of colors and surfaces). Furthermore, both do not seem to act of their own will, but their actions seem mediated, as if they were based upon a script written by someone else (i.e. "a movie", Gladney's constantly repeated televisual formula).

There is a significant difference between the "split personalities" experienced by Frenesi and Jack, Frenesi's actions and her plot to shoot Weed have a real source independent of her: Brock Vond. Both Jack and Frenesi act out scripts not written by themselves, but Frenesi's script is written by an agent of political oppression. Brock Vond persuades her to give the gun to Rex and to convince him that Weed is a traitor. Frenesi betrays herself and the revolution in the moment she agrees to act on Vond's behalf. In that very moment there occurs a split in her personality; previously latent in her weakness for men in uniform, it becomes manifest the moment of the shooting. It is a split between her "real" revolutionary intentions and her "imaginary" desires which she acts out in her relationship with Vond. Always viewing reality through an imaginary lens (cf. chapter 4.2.1), it is revealing that she "escapes" into a movie the moment reality seems out of her grip. In this respect she is similar to Jack; however, Pynchon makes the political implications of this escape apparent. After all, Brock Vond exploits Frenesi's split personality to end the revolution.

In Vineland the perceptual is often bound in the political. Another kind of boundary crossing not occuring in Wallace and DeLillo is illustrated by TV figures passing through the screen and entering reality. In the final days of the revolutionary People's Republic of Rock and Roll, Weed Atman feels himself under constant supervision by Dr. Larry Elasmo, a dentist inundating the airwaves with his commercials: "there at some nearby table would be the silent, staring Dr. Larry Elasmo, or a person wearing, like a coverall and veil, his ubiquitous screen image, grainy, flickering at the edges...." (p. 227) The scene is ambiguous, for the reader is not able to discern the ontological status of the person Weed observes. Is it Elasmo, a person resembling him, or is there perhaps no person at all but a projection of Weed's fears? Whatever it is, it definitely exerts power over Weed. This power originates from Weed's fears as much as from the televisual ubiquitousness of Elasmo's image.

That this imaginary power relation can easily lead to the subject's submission is made clear by another example. After masturbating to her favorite motorcycle-cop-show "ChiPs", Frenesi is confronted with a "real" policeman at her door: "what should occur for her but the primal Tubefreek miracle, [...] there outside on the landing, broken up into little dots like pixels of a video image [...]." (p. 84) The screen of the door through which she beholds the cop makes clear that Frenesi's perception of reality is deeply informed by TV. Watching "CHiPs" reinforces her fears and desires, which also shapes her relation to real representatives of the state. The cop-show causes Frenesi to be submissive to the real man in uniform. This encounter is full of sexual undertones: "He'd had one hand up on the doorjamb, leaning and talking, the way boys had to her in high school. She'd remembered to zip her pants on the way to the door, but had only done up a button or two of her shirt, no bra on, of course." (p. 84) Frenesi's susceptibility to power in these scenes is shown to be inseparable from her "conditioning" through television.

The ubiquity and familiarity of TV is the source of its power to condition. In the most superficial way, television offers modes of behavior upon which subjects can build their identity. Though she is aware of the reduction and inadequacy of televisual representations,(127) Prairie nevertheless models her relationship with her friend Ché on a televisual "star-and-sidekick routine, going back to when they were little, playing Bionic, Police, or Wonder Woman." (p. 327) Television's unvarying presentation of pain-free and zit-free formulas replaces experiences in the unpleasant real world. Furthermore, understanding this psychological process does not necessarily undercut the medium's ability to shape behavior.

The TV-addict Hector Zuñiga also recognizes the discrepancy between reality and simulation, as becomes obvious in his talk with Zoyd about televised police work. Speaking of federal prosecutor Brock Vond and his troops, he says that they are "Nothín like that shit on the Tube, nothín at all . . . and cold . . . colder than you ever want to find out about . . . ." (p. 31) Nevertheless, Hector models his own behavior completely on cop-shows. Listening to Hector, Frenesi sees through his act:

Here came some sentimental pitch, delivered deadpan ? cop solidarity, his problems with racism in the agency, [...] maybe a little "Hill Street Blues" thrown in, plus who knew what other licks from all that Tube, though she thought she recognized Raymond Burr's "Robert Ironside" character and a little of "The Captain" from "Mod Squad". (p. 345)

In Vineland, the boundary between television and reality is shown to be a permeable one because the televisual representations deeply affect characters' perceptions of themselves and others. As in DeLillo's and Wallace's fictions, Pynchon's characters are informed by the media, but this "information" is always of a political nature. The vision of pixelated Elasmos and cops, or shaping one's character into a media image is connected to deeply rooted desires and fears which make the subject susceptible to power. Far from being a sealed-off space discontinuous with reality, Pynchon shows how much the imaginary realm of TV shapes reality by reinforcing power relations. The policeman on Frenesi's landing is and isn't a "CHiPs"-officer because in the imaginary realm of her desires both real and TV-cop merge into one powerful and attractive man in uniform.