8
" I’ve claimed—so far sort of vaguely—that what makes televisions hegemony so resistant to critique by the new Fiction of Image is that TV has coopted the distinctive forms of the same cynical, irreverent, ironic, absurdist post-WWII literature that the new Imagists use as touchstones. The fact is that TV’s re-use of postmodern cool has actually evolved as an inspired solution to the keep-Joe-at-once-alienated-from-and-part-of-the-million-eyed-crowd problem. The solution entailed a gradual shift from oversincerity to a kind of bad-boy irreverence in the Big Face that TV shows us. This in turn reflected a wider shift in U.S. perceptions of how art was supposed to work, a transition from art’s being a creative instantiation of real values to art’s being a creative rejection of bogus values. And this wider shift, in its turn, paralleled both the development of the postmodern aesthetic and some deep and serious changes in how Americans chose to view concepts like authority, sincerity, and passion in terms of our willingness to be pleased. Not only are sincerity and passion now “out,” TV-wise, but the very idea of pleasure has been undercut. As Mark C. Miller puts it, contemporary television “no longer solicits our rapt absorption or hearty agreement, but—like the ads that subsidize it—actually flatters us for the very boredom and distrust it inspires in us.” 24 "
― David Foster Wallace , A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
14
" Não é significativo que, em inglês, as palavras lobster (lagosta), fish (peixe) e chicken (frango) se refiram tanto ao animal quanto à carne, enquanto a maior parte dos mamíferos exige eufemismos como beef (carne de boi) e pork (carne de porco) para nos ajudar a separar a carne que comemos da criatura viva a quem um dia ela pertenceu? Seria isso uma prova de que existe um desconforto profundo a respeito de comer animais superiores, endêmico o bastante para vir à tona no idioma, mas que diminui à medida que nos afastamos da ordem dos mamíferos? (E seria lamb/lamb (cordeiro/cordeiro) o contraexemplo que empana toda essa teoria, ou existiriam motivos especiais, bíblico-históricos, para tal equivalência?) "
― David Foster Wallace , A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
16
" AN ACADEMIC DEFINITION of Lynchian might be that the term "refers to a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former's perpetual containment within the latter." But like postmodern or pornographic, Lynchian is one of those Porter Stewart-type words that's ultimately definable only ostensively-i.e., we know it when we see it. Ted Bundy wasn't particularly Lynchian, but good old Jeffrey Dahmer, with his victims' various anatomies neatly separated and stored in his fridge alongside his chocolate milk and Shedd Spread, was thoroughgoingly Lynchian. A recent homicide in Boston, in which the deacon of a South Shore church reportedly gave chase to a vehicle that bad cut him off, forced the car off the road, and shot the driver with a highpowered crossbow, was borderline Lynchian. A Rotary luncheon where everybody's got a comb-over and a polyester sport coat and is eating bland Rotarian chicken and exchanging Republican platitudes with heartfelt sincerity and yet all are either amputees or neurologically damaged or both would be more Lynchian than not. "
― David Foster Wallace , A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
