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Derek Redel's avatar

Sad how far the war has lowered Jessica's standards for happiness. But that's all she knows...

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Andrew H.'s avatar

Just like all of us.

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Jed's avatar

I am ashamed to admit that I imagine Roger and Jessica Rabbit every single time I think about Roger Mexico and Jessica. For me, they will always be cartoons of themselves, drawn in that distinct style of Roger Rabbit. I had to look up and find out that the first Roger Rabbit texts came out in 1981, so it wasn't a reference by Pynchon, and I haven't really even paid attention to the movie, and yet every one of there scenes is animated in my mind. Same pattern: the man has a last name, the woman doesn't, even though they're not married. Maybe Jessica has a last name.... of course she does, it's Swanlake. But Mexico's called Mexico, and so syntactically he has two names, just like Roger and Jessica Rabbit. Before I could stop myself, I had and subb'ed in the sexiest woman in cartoon history for her in my mind, and it worked perfectly, so it stayed, as anachronous as it is. what can I do? nothing. They seem unserious compared to the rest of the book for me; especially Roger Mexico reads to me as a buffoon -- who actually believes in that statistics stuff anyway?

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Andrew H.'s avatar

Ha I always thought they WERE based on those two! Never knew that the cartoon came out after. That puts a spin on my vision of them. They do seem quite a bit less serious. Mostly to me they represent love during the war, the more depressing nature of how the war tears people apart or changes them, but I do think Pynchon is trying to say a bit with their beliefs and how they view the war. Though that makes it a lot harder to analyze on my end because I occasionally feel like I'm stretching things lol.

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