The Importance Of Thanatoids In Vineland

When one is invited to a ‘60s, ‘70s, or ‘80s decade theme party, they would expect to walk into a colorful room, perhaps with people dressed in miniskirts and tie dye, patent leather and knee-high white boots. Maybe the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, or even Madonna would be playing in the background as peace signs are held up in pictures and phrases such as “Rad!” and “Groovy!” are flung around. However, one would not expect to walk into a decade theme party and see a simulation of a police state, with people dressed as DEA agents, young revolutionaries, drug addicts, and policemen. They wouldn’t expect play drug raids or police brutality because the ‘60s to the ‘80s were the time when the Brady family became blended and when Michelle Tanner was

born. It was a “golden age” of music and peace and fashion. Wasn’t it?
This is just one of several arguments that Thomas Pynchon makes in Vineland—how what is shown in media is handpicked so only the more unproblematic, quirky, groovy, and “rock ‘n’ roll” parts of history are circulated and remembered while violent movements and government injustice are left to be forgotten.
Vineland is a highly critical novel of America from the Nixon to the Reagan eras. It takes place in a momentous time of history where repression is on full blast and the War on Drugs is stronger than ever. Pynchon paints a painfully realistic picture of America that goes beyond pop culture and goes into great detail with the personal tolls it took on the people who lived in it.
Through jumps in the plot, asides, and even some mimicry of government tactics, Pynchon bluntly points out the “mind control” of the government through the Tube, the harsh struggle for civil liberties, repression, and unnecessary federal and police involvement.
One of the first characteristic and evident themes in Vineland is television, or “the Tube.” Considering that the word itself is always capitalized, it can be thought to be its own character—perhaps a governmental figure whose main purpose is to distract its viewers while simultaneously controlling what they think.

Notably, all the characters in the novel seem to be more addicted to the Tube than drugs, which indicates Pynchon’s stance on drugs in relation to television. Thanatoids are the collective group in the novel that demonstrate the television addiction the most as they “[spend] at least every part of every waking hour with an eye on the Tube.” Relatedly, Thanatoid Ortho Bob describes his people as “like death, only different” personalities, implying some sort of correlation between being reduced to just existing and watching copious amounts of the Tube. Drugs and the Tube become analogous in this way as they both lead to forms of death—drugs take a physical toll on the body while the Tube has a more abstract, mental effect on the mind. However, since the Tube is more accessible, innocently entertaining, and, most of all, legal, more people become damaged by the Tube than

drugs.
Another victim that the Tube takes a toll on is Hector Zuñiga. His life is ultimately controlled by the Tube, going so far as to having to check himself into the National Endowment for Video Education and Rehabilitation and being considered “one of the most intractable cases.” All of his thoughts become Tube-related as he hums the Flinstones them to “calm himself down” and makes multiple references to shows in his speech. Hector becomes dependent on the Tube and is unable to even handle a life beyond a Tube screen without it constantly on his mind. Instead of being an individual, Hector becomes an embodiment of the Tube, an “escaped lunatic,” and a “Brady Buncher.” Television becomes a drug and Hector is unhealthily addicted.
The Tube exhibits a large amount of control over how viewers define a period of time such as the ‘60s. Prairie learns something new when watching some 24fps footage of the 60s—that a time which she thought was the epitomical era of “miniskirts, wire-rim glasses, and love beads” was actually also a time of “beating the boys with slapjacks, grabbing handcuffed girls by the pussy, smacking little kids around, and killing the stock.” Essentially, a time of police brutality and young revolution was covered up, almost caricatured, by “reruns like ‘Bewitched’ or ‘The Brady Bunch’” as if America in the 60s was some kind of utopia, even though it was in violent unrest. Similar to Hector, Prairie’s perception of reality becomes distorted by the Tube, due to the media’s tedious snips and cuts in the fabric of history.
In Vineland, Pynchon makes it clear that he finds America’s problem with television addiction a more critical problem than drug possession.

While at first glance the novel seems to be about the consequences of drugs or the War on Drugs, the drug use is never extreme or life-threatening. However, the consequences of television addiction are described in great detail, even if just referenced in the characters’ mannerisms. The Tube portrays a false sense of reality and makes viewers believe in a perfect world. It reduces the viewers’ view of the world to a mere peephole, a narrow “Tube” perhaps, focusing only on the quirky antics of the Brady family and the wardrobe of those that lived through the period and, gradually, viewers become obsessed with this false utopia and are unable to cope with the real world without incorporating it into their

lives.
Mimicking the format of television shows throughout Vineland, Pynchon tends to leave many areas in the plot inconclusive, going on many seemingly unrelated asides and adventures and jumping around with flash forwards and flashbacks, before clarifying what was really happening much later on. Pynchon distracts the reader from one plot line with another, complementary with how governments provide its people with entertainment in order to distract from significantly more serious problems (e.g. Rome with the Colosseum). In other words, the government doesn’t want its people to know what it’s doing, so they make the steps to repression subtle to prevent resistance.
One of the more palpable examples of this inconspicuous distraction starts at the beginning of the novel, which features Zoyd Wheeler around the time of his televised annual “publicly crazy” demonstration to earn his mental-disability check. While it may be entertaining for the Tube viewers, the more complex reasoning behind it is ambiguous as outside of his televised appearances, Zoyd doesn’t demonstrate a mental disability.
It is then revealed later in the novel that the annual stunt is a part of a very shady “mental-disability agreement” between Brock Vond and Zoyd. Vond abuses his federal powers to, in a way, blackmail and set up Zoyd into keeping Frenesi away from Prairie and him because of Vond’s obsession over Frenesi. The mental-disability checks are largely just a way of making sure Zoyd is not “tryín to skip,” which is representative of an injustice where the government puts their own wants above the government’s main original purpose—to protect, not threaten, the individual, natural rights of its people.
Having more backstory on the annual stunt offers a more somewhat logical insight into the event. Originally, the reader might feel as if Zoyd only puts on an act to get mental disability benefits because he is too careless to get a real job. However, later on in the novel, the reader has a shift in sympathy as a more tragic backstory is realized as a man with federal power get his person feelings involved in a case and harasses and sets up another man into an ultimatum.
Perhaps the umbrella critique of Vineland is on the Reagan-era repression—specifically, the War on Drugs, the attempt to seize civil liberties, and police brutality. The Vond-Zoyd conflict is the prime example of Pynchon’s critique. While Zoyd never gets into many run-ins with the law and is, for the most part, a good man, he does smoke marijuana and Vond takes advantage of this. Vond plants marijuana in Zoyd’s house and frames him, but when Zoyd tries to fight back, citing the Fifth Amendment, “innocent until proven guilty,” Elmhurst says that Zoyd is essentially hopeless in the case as “That was another planet, think they used to call it America…You were automatically guilty the minute they found that marijuana on your land.” Through this unlawful statement, Pynchon depicts how in the ‘80s, the War on Drugs was more important to federal agents than civil rights and liberties and how a man in uniform could manipulate the law simply because “you think men like that would lie?”
The government seemed to imitate fascist ideals of limiting civil liberties and the abuse of power. Vineland implies that the War on Drugs is just the beginning and that the government will abuse its power and try to control every individual. As Mucho says, “’Cause soon they’re gonna be coming after everything, not just drugs, but beer, cigarettes, sugar, salt, fat, you name it, anything that could remotely please any of your senses, because they need to control all that. And they will.” To make America a crime-free and orderly country, the government was willing to suppress individuality and freedom, but doing this only made the governed more enraged.
Violence and brutality are characteristics of the revolutions in Vineland, and Pynchon signifies them as a violation of civil liberties and completely unnecessary. With the Campaign Against Marijuana Production and their anti-drug raids as well as the growing police state, Frenesi points out how the victims are “targets so powerless compared to those who were setting them up that some motive, less luminous than that of the national interest, must have been at work.” That is to say, it is unjust how the people the government are trying to suppress really have no way of fighting against such big forces, yet the government still goes all out on its attacks, perhaps to assert their dominance or give warnings.
Pynchon is highly critical of American values and government in the ‘80s in Vineland, particularly the effects of the Tube, distraction antics, “mind control,” Reagan and Nixon era Repression, the War on Drugs, the seeming seizure of civil liberties, and unnecessary police brutality.
Although written decades ago, some of the issues are still present today even if it is not always evident. Pynchon brings attention to matters that are usually ignored or are too understated to be realized. Often, the novel brings about feelings of discomfort as in its discussions of America, especially with the limelights being put on several taboos, but it is the kind of awakening needed to force the Tubes to be turned off and the subtleties to become controversies that are fought over without distraction.