Blog as Post
It happened again…
If you didn’t read the post I made about Mumbo Jumbo two months ago, I’d recommend you go check it out, as this will be expanding upon on many of the same topics (also I really liked that blog post, find it here: https://historyasblog.blogspot.com/2024/03/nonsense-broadcasting-company-nbc.html).
While working through the behemoth 70-page reading we had due last week, one sentence jumped straight off the page at me. "Lee sat on the sofa. His peculiar smile appeared, the little smirk that made George think of a comedian in a silent film with the screen going dark around his head" (DeLillo 289). As I read it, I snapped out of my half-attentive trance and read the sentence again and again. Have I been doomed to blog about the same topic over and over again? Has Mr. Mitchell assigned these books specifically to draw my attention to these small similarities and force me to draw conclusions until I can’t anymore? Probably not.
In my brief research, I found that this specific editing technique is known as an “iris shot”. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a brief video of some quintessential examples in cartoons (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqDhAW3TDR8). In each instance, the focus of the closing “iris” is always a character’s face, usually making some sort of expressive face or gesture towards the camera. I’m reminded of “Jim face” from The Office. I think DeLillo hits the nail on the head for the energy that Lee gives off.
Just like Mumbo Jumbo, both of these postmodernist works of historical(ish) fiction use references to television. Mumbo Jumbo utilizes common television tropes in a satirical way, whereas Libra here is making a direct cultural reference to a common editing technique. However, I think the intended effect here is the same. Both books draw on the reader’s preconceived notions about how something should look based on common tropes or elements to paint a visual picture in the reader’s head.
I think the use of “television” in Libra represents the way it is trying to tell its story. Who better to explain than our favorite plot-within-a-plot character, Nicholas Branch? During his receiving of particularly gory evidence from the CIA, Branch is sent "an actual warped bullet that has been fired for test purposes through the wrist of a seated cadaver. We are on another level here, Branch thinks. Beyond documents now. They want me to touch and smell" (DeLillo 299). And what goes beyond documents better than television, the medium all about sight and sound rather than… looking at words on a page (can “reading” even be considered a sense?) Words tend to be subjective, but it’s hard to refute evidence that everybody will sense in the exact same way. BIG ASTERISK. More sensory inputs does not equal “more factful”, though! Libra is trying its hardest to confuse you, or at least convince you that things aren’t exactly what you thought they were, through its onslaught of historical fact. There’s a human tendency to trust our senses, so when Libra calls on your human senses, your initial reaction is (probably) “ooh, I know exactly what DeLillo is talking about” which is how I think DeLillo really sells the key moments of the book.
Are the 4D cinemas that move your seat and spray you with water during the rainy moments of a film the peak of postmodernist thought? Remains to be seen…
I think one of most interesting parts about the footage of Oswald being killed by Jack Ruby is that it itself looks cartoonish. There is even a degree to which it looks staged, the way Jack Ruby, a man with mobster affiliations, takes him out quickly and decisively by pulling the gun from his coat pocket. I think the way these different footages involving Kennedy's death have been examined so throroughly by different historians over the course of history by historians who are trying to explain Kennedy's assassination points exactly to what history as fiction is critiquing as a genre in that these historians tend to bend too much towards believing history can be explained through a single narrative.
ReplyDeleteI really love how you expanded on your TV tropes topic from Mumbo Jumbo, I read the first post and the connection you drew from different aspects of Mumbo Jumbo to cartoons and things we see in TV was an amazing way to interpret the book. I also think the same with Libra. By connecting Libra to a common television trope it brings the story alive and allows us ( the reader) to imagine the events happening in the novel, and the way Lee reacts to them in our heads. Because this book it somewhat of a conspiracy theory it also really helps intertwine the aspects of fiction and reality seamlessly, making the novel even more interesting and believable.Great post!
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting parallel, it's quite interesting how you're able to see these connections. I had pretty much entirely missed any and all references to television and hadn't noticed anything you mentioned, so I'm glad you made this post. DeLillo's verbage here makes strong ties to the readers, better engaging them in the story. I think you did a good job explicating how this occurred. This post was quite interesting, thanks!
ReplyDeleteThat photo is a great example of Lee's distinctive smirk, which both infuriates and raises heaps of questions about what this guy knows. These are the images that led Jack Ruby to grow infuriated with "the smirky bastard who shot our president," and Lee really emerges as the emotional scapegoat for all the rage and confusion around the assassination, at first. He looks like he's gloating, and he even looks like he's enjoying himself.
ReplyDeleteThe stuff about DeLillo's use of TV throughout the novel is very interesting, and very on-brand for DeLillo (check out his novel _White Noise_, where there's almost always a TV playing in the background of any family scene, and we get random interjections from dish-detergent ads in the middle of important dialogue). As the assassination plot comes to fruition in the final chapters, we get an extended meditation on the televised nature of Oswald's assassination by Ruby: we get Lee glancing at the camera, inviting us to share his pain; and we get Beryl Parmenter watching the footage on an infinite loop. And though it isn't strictly "television," the odd and anomalous historical fact that the *assassination was filmed by an amateur home-movie enthusiast* just adds to the key role played by the televised image: the footage would seem to represent the "reality" of "what happened," better than any eyewitness reconstruction, but as we discussed (and as DeLillo demonstrates through his integration of the Zapruder footage into his narrative), that "document"--like the supposedly doctored pics of Lee with his rifle--raises more questions than it answers.
I think it's interesting how the parallels to television tropes serve to make the story even more complicated. The sheer amount of evidence present is already enough so a sensationalized TV version only makes it harder to understand what's important, even if DeLillo is actually trying to provide a legitimate explanation of what happened. I also thought it was interesting how you mention that making it more like television is another way of giving the reader more ways to experience it beyond just reading.
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