Pattern Recognition Notes

"He took a duck in the face at two hundred and fifty knots"

Anchor Passages:
Pg. 35 (After seeing the Michelin Man, says this mantra, gives story of the origin)
Pg. 158 (In the bar, after getting the watermark number. Relaxes her after the meeting).

General Thematic Significance:
(a) The importance of the ideas is that it is an examples of and tool of coping. By repeating the story, or phrase, after stressed situations, she calms herself, "land" the plane, and overcome the situation. The story was told to her by her father.

(b) It comforts her. A verbal tic.

Related terms:
"secure the perimeter," pilates, advertising, low chance occurrence

Questions:
1. What does the duck mean?
2. Why does it comfort her?




/Fashion/
Anchor Passages:
Pg. 17 (Cayce explains that she has a significant negative reaction to labels)
Pg. 148 (An extreme reaction to branding, specifically Hello Kitty)
Pg. 18 (Fashion has becomes a 'simulacra of simulacra of simulacra'with re: Tommy H)
Pg. 35 (Cayce has a phobic/allergic reaction to the Michelin Man)

General Thematic Significance:
(a) Cayce is adverse to things that are not unique and to consumer culture in general. She feels, on a deeper level, a disgust for teh practice of society to be defined by logos and the things they buy.

(b) Cayce is symbolic of a society in which abstract concepts like 'fashion' and 'marketing' manifest themselves so strongly that they become actual physical sicknesses. Like 'TH' the simulative, artificial aspects of our culture have become reality.

Related terms:
Labels, brands, Michelin Man, 'Tommy Hilfiger event horizon'

Questions:
1. Why is it important that Cayce feels aversion to the things that society values?
2. Why is it that the consumerist idea is important to Cayce's job?
3. How great an impact do you think trademarking has on our social and cultural perception?
4. To what degree does our modern day fashion represent our culture?




/Jet Lag/

Anchor Passages:
Pg. 63 (Jet lag affects the brain and the soul)
Pg. 1-2 (Literal effect of jet lag on the body and the more abstract effect, the loss of self-awareness)


General Thematic Significance:
(a) Jet lag is a form of disconnection with the self. We get caught up in the business of everyday life and constant floods of information & decisions, and neglecting a deeper experience of the world. The physical disruption of our natural rhythms.

(b) Jet lag signifies the alienation between the artificial, modern world and the soul. The soul has a natural order and it gets confused because of artificial times zones. It connects with Cayce's allergy to brands because logos are a symbol of the artificial, modern, mass produced consumerism.

Related Terms:
Fashion, Footage

Questions:
1. How are jet lag and footage connected?
2. Does Cayce resolve her jet lag by the end?




/Footage/

Anchor Passages:
Pg. 78 (Footage as an aft form that gives Cayce a sense of purpose and connects a community together)
Pg. 66 (Bigend describes footage in terms of how it is made, organized, and at 'face-value', while Cayce recognizes its deeper meaning and its impact)
Pg. 22-23 (Parkaboy says you should go to new footage..)
Pg. 69 ("Do you imagine that...the footage is a work of proven genius")

General Thematic Significance:
The footage consumes both Cayce's personal and professional life. It symbolizes a complex relationship between the market world and the truly organic. Everything in the novel, in the same way, is connected to the footage, of the idea of the footage.

Related terms:
marketing, art

Questions:
1. What isn't related to the footage?
2. What is Gibson trying to tell us with the image of the footage?




/Mirror World/

Anchor Passages:
Pg. 108 ("They're part of the mirror-world...")
Pg. 70 ("Everything, today, is to some extent the reflection of something else.")
Pg. 3 (When C. explains the term to mean slight differences between cultures)
Pg. 60 (After a company dinner...)

General Thematic Significance
(a) Gibson's idea of a mirror-world in Pattern Recognition reflects characters' distorted views of the world. Cayce refers to this mirror-world in a negative way, almost as if this 'mirror-world' is a distorted reflection of life. This is significant, because the book exposes how a society oversaturated with media view the world.

(b) Mirror-world provokes the idea of simulacra. The thematic significance is that everything is a simulacra or mirror of something else. Everything is moving closer to being artificial or digital.

(c) Mirror-world is Cayce's way of exposing parallels in societies different from the one that she is used to. ON the surface they may look similar but they each have small variations that globalization can't account for. Cayce notices mirror-worlds throughout the novel and always makes her uneasy.

Related Terms:
Simulacra, disorientation, allergy, parallelism

Questions:
1. Since Cayce views the world as a mirror-world, how does this alter her views about people?
2. What purpose do the MW serve?