Week 1: Reaction to Dom Delillo, “Valparaiso”
At first, I was a bit perplexed (and bemused) as to what this reading has to do with the class. This did not last long! Delillo’s work uses dislocation in space as a simile for alienation: the main character literally & figuratively does not know where he is going. Given that we are concerned with works tied to a specific place, exploring this kind of geographic confusion can be a good starting point.
At a more practical level, I found it interesting to visualize the play, when staged, as an installation. The amount of repetition, the fragmented timeline and the simplicity of the staging make it possible to imagine this as an installation where, rather than an audience sitting still, visitors could wander in and out, gradually picking up a sense of the underlying story.
This kind of dipping in and out, “consuming” the work by stringing together repetitive soundbites, also echoes the forms of broadcast television. I believe it would be possible to “channel-surf” Valparaiso in the same way that you watch television.
I was reminded of David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, a film where the demands of television consume the protagonist’s life, making him a much more involved participant than he really expected to be.
The choice of Valparaiso as the (implied) locale for the main events of the play is also interesting. During the Pinochet dictatorship, political prisoners were bound, with plastic bags over their head, and thrown out of airplanes into the Pacific Ocean. Perhaps Michael Majeski, having tapped into this resonance, has to play out his role to its fatal ending.