While reading Pattern Recognition, the name of Bigend’s Blue Ant struck out at me. Although I didn’t know what a blue ant was at the time, it seemed like a peculiar name that Gibson deliberately chose. At the beginning of the novel on page 6, when Blue Ant is first introduced to the reader, Gibson’s description of this company as a, “Relatively tiny in terms of permanent staff, globally diluted, more post geographic than multinational, the agency has from the beginning billed itself as a high-speed, low drag life-form in an advertising ecology of lumbering herbivores. Or perhaps as some non-carbon-based life-form, entirely sprung from the smooth and ironic brow of its founder, Hubertus Bigend, a nominal Belgian who looks like Tom Cruise on a diet of virgins’ blood and truffled chocolates.” at first, sounded like an interesting stylistic writing approach that Gibson used in describing this company but when I ‘wiki-ed’ what a blue ant actually was, I realized that Gibson was in fact, literally describing was a blue ant was! The blue ant, as Wiki has defined, is actually a wasp that is about 1 inch in length, and is a wingless and ground dwelling parasite that hunts its prey (crickets) by paralyzing it then laying its eggs inside its victim (while it’s still alive) so that when the larva hatch, it has a source of food readily available. The contrasting images of Bigend’s Blue Ant and the blue ant are very clear. Both are described as small sized, both are situated in an ecology of lumbering herbivores in which they prey and both are described to have eerily emerged from a physical body with a suggested image of a gruesome devouring of its victims’ bodies.
-Haeji
I find this to be a very interesting point Haeji. When I did some searching for "blue ant" online, I thought it pretty peculiar that the blue ant name is also being used for a bluetooth headset device (a wireless headset used for phone communications). The picture that is painted by the creature the blue ant and Gibson's usage suggests, as you said, that he was making a point.
ReplyDeleteCould it be that Gibson believs or wants to make the point that large cooperations, and suggestively the ones that have to deal with branding, are like parasites? Do these companies prey on the public injecting their products and ideologies to many unknowing people to have it fester then come to fruition in the new form of a market trend or product?
These are very interesting points,in the book Cayce said that at some point she didn't like the idea of working for Bigend. The word "productize" was used when describing what he does even though Bigend says its not about money, it's about excellency. Cayce felt that the footage was too precious and rare to become a market commodity. In Cayce's eyes, the footage was the last real thing that the world had yet to discover. She wanted to keep it that way, untainted and pure.