THE POSTMODERN TOON: (TOTALITARIAN) "FASCISM", VIOLENCE, AND CARTOONS IN POSTMODERNIST LITERATURE ABOUT AMERICA A Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the ~ University of Canterbury by Phillip Wise University of Canterbury 2001 Ps 3. \,,/ "6 \ Contents ZDO \ Abstract ............................................................................................................................ 4 Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... 5 Chapter one Preliminary: Cartoons .............................................................................................. 7 The cartoon psycho ...................................................................................................... 9 The cartoon rainbow .................................................................................................. 14 Vineland the toon ....................................................................................................... 21 Chapter two Preliminary: Politics ................................................................................................ 25 P ync h on ' s " countercu1 ture po1"" ItlCS ......................................................................... 27 "Structure" is structured in binary fashion ................................................................ 30 Traces, palimpsests and wrong paths taken ............................................................... 32 An alternative to systems ........................................................................................... 36 Radical democracy ..................................................................................................... 39 What use is postn10dernism? ..................................................................................... 43 Chapter three Totalitarian Control ................................................................................................ 51 Control structures in Pynchon' s novels ..................................................................... 51 Totality, totalitarianism ............................................................................................. 58 Totalisation and the aestheticisation of politics ......................................................... 65 Aestheticised politics in Vineland ............................................................................. 70 Chapter four A Total Fascist: Liminal Processes Favouring Totality ....................................... 76 Engineering conformity in Vineland ......................................................................... 76 Liminal Processes Favouring Totality ....................................................................... 83 Vineland: (totalitarian) "fascism" .............................................................................. 86 Chapter five Armoured Egos on the Rampage ........................................................................... 91 Psychic armour in Gravity's Rainbow ....................................................................... 91 Everything can be consumed: American Psycho ....................................................... 97 American Psycho, postmodern novel ...................................................................... 101 Patrick Bateman's "ego maintenance" .................................................................... 102 The system dines out ............................................................................................... l 07 A rogue element. ...................................................................................................... 109 Chapter six Cartoons: Diminished Representations? ............................................................. 117 Historical meaning of cartoon ................................................................................. 119 Banal usages ............................................................................................................ 126 Chapter seven Cartoons and Postmodern Discourses ................................................................. 135 Turning cartoon ....................................................................................................... 13 7 Postmodemism as "cartoon" ................................................................................... 143 Chapter eight The Totalitarian Toon ........................................................................................... 154 Cartoon (totalitarian) "fascists" ............................................................................... 15 8 Tooning the body: beauty standards ........................................................................ 163 Living the cartoon life ............................................................................................. 165 The drawing of lines ................................................................................................ 169 Chapter nine Tooning Us On to Love, Laughter and Democracy ............................................ 173 Roger's toon types: abnegatory and accepting cartoons ......................................... 173 Toward a better world .............................................................................................. 179 Love ......................................................................................................................... 181 Laughter ................................................................................................................... 187 Chapter ten The Democratic Toon ............................................................................................ 191 A "single co-ordinate" ............................................................................................. 191 Overcoming polarization in theory ......................................................................... .200 The provisional ........................................................................................................ 206 Engagement with liminal space that leads to the provisional.. ................................ 21 0 Chapter eleven The Rabbit's Handcuffs: Tying the Toon to the Real.. ...................................... 216 Anelypsis into the "real" scene ................................................................................ 216 Politicizing the spectacle/seizing the means of interpretation ................................. 219 References ............................................................................................................... 230 4 Abstract This thesis sets out to investigate the representation of politics as a cartoon in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and Vineland, and to apply what we find to Bret Easton Ellis's controversial American Psycho. This investigation will also hold implications for other postmodemist literature, and for the possibility of constructing a "postmodem" politics capable of opposing the political order depicted in Pynchon's novels. Pynchon hints at such a politics, but tends to focus his writing on diagnosing reasons for their failure rather than prescribing for their success. Pynchon and Ellis both depict late, "postmodem" "spectacle" capitalist cultural environments as being in important respects "totalitarian" and "fascist". At the same time, the novels associate "fascism" with cartoons. After initial chapters describing the place of both cartoons and politics in the novels under discussion, the three following chapters explore the three novels' politics in more depth and seek to justify a reading of their environments as being an amalgam of totalitarianism and fascism, or what I will call "(totalitarian) 'fascism"'. These chapters identify and apply the concept of "Liminal Processes Favouring Totality" as an explanation for the existence of fascist structures and personalities in a late capitalist environment. Over the course of the final six chapters, the argument changes direction to explore the signification of "cartoons", which are found to support a cultural meaning wider than that of drawings or animations. This wider metaphoric meaning is, broadly, the diminishment of representation to below three dimensions. The attachment of this signification to "cartoons" allows me to show that a "democratic" "postmodem" politics which is able to resist "Liminal Processes Favouring Totality" emerges from a reading of both Pynchon's and Ellis's texts. Ironically, in order to energize this sort of political response, both Gravity's Rainbow and American Psycho in particular are designed to affect the reader outside the world of the text they are reading, that is, in that very reality many critics say postmodemism denies. 5 Acknowledgements I'd especially like to thank Patrick Evans for his supervision, advice and support, even when things weren't going very well. Thanks to Denis Walker, Kate Trevella, and the rest of the staff at the English Department at the University of Canterbury. Thanks to the University itself for awarding me a doctoral scholarship, making life easier for three years. Thanks too to someone I've never met: Tim Ware for providing an indispensable Web Guide to three of Pynchon's novels at http://www.hyperarts.comlpynchonl gravityl gravity-f.html. Gravity's Rainbow is a labyrinth, and I'd have been driven mad finding things without that particular resource. In addition, I would like to thank everyone who has helped