Cayce Pollard
Encyclopedia
Cayce Pollard is the fictional protagonist of William Gibson
's 2003 novel Pattern Recognition
.
, she pronounces her given name "Case". She is a freelance marketing consultant, a coolhunter with an unusual intuitive sensitivity for branding, manifested primarily in her physical aversion
to particular logo
s and corporate mascots. A notable exception to her ability to immediately discern semiotic content in imagery is the succession of images of the September 11 attacks in 2001, for her "an experience outside culture". The attacks had added significance to Cayce's backstory in that they encompassed the disappearance of her father, Win, which in turn impelled her mother, Cynthia, to exploring electronic voice phenomena as her own means of diving patterns in the background static. Cayce is left feeling "ungrieved" for her father until she reviews footage and records of that day tracking his movements until he vanishes.
in Tokyo). These are referred to as "Cayce Pollard Units" or C.P.U.s, a term initially used by her friend Damien, and subsequently by Cayce, although never aloud. They are typically Fruit of the Loom
shrunken cotton t-shirts worn with black oversized Levi's 501s, skirts, tights, boots, and a Buzz Rickson MA-1 bomber jacket
.
propositions Cayce with a new mission: to uncover those responsible for distributing a succession of mysterious, anonymous, artistic film clips ("the footage") on the internet. Cayce had been following the footage and is a participant in Fetish : Footage : Forum, a cult-like online discussion forum hosting a collection of obsessives theorizing on the clips' meaning, setting, sequence and origin. Although wary of corrupting the artistic process and mystery of the clips, she reluctantly accepts.
An acquaintances from the forum passes Cayce a lead of someone who claims to have discovered an encrypted watermark on one clip. After concocting a fake persona to seduce the Tokyo native who claims to know the watermark code, Cayce, travels to Tokyo to meet him and retrieve the code. Thwarting an attempt by two unknown men to steal the code, Cayce escapes and returns to London. There, she learns from Blue Ant that she has been investigated by a shady group of Russians who had wanted her to refuse the job of tracking the footage. Through a chance encounter Cayce meets a pair of London natives dealing in antiquated technological artifacts who put her in contact with a collector, the retired cryptographer and mathematician Hobbs Baranov. Cayce strikes a deal with Baranov: she buys an artifact he dearly covets but cannot afford (a Curta calculator
) and in return he decyphers the email address to which the watermark code was sent. Using this email address Cayce makes contact with Stella Volkova, and through their correspondence learns that the legendary maker of the footage is Stella's sister Nora.
Cayce flies to Moscow to meet Stella in person and to witness Nora crafting the footage. It emerges that Nora had been catastrophically injured in a claymore mine explosion that killed their parents years earlier and because of brain damage can only express herself through film. After returning to her hotel, Cayce is drugged and abducted, and wakes up in a mysterious prison facility outside the city. Cayce escapes; exhausted, disoriented and lost, she nearly collapses but is rescued and later brought to the prison where the film is processed. There Bigend, Stella and Nora's uncle Andrei, and the latter's security employees are waiting for her. Over dinner with Cayce, the Russians reveal that they have been spying on her since she posted to a discussion forum speculating that the clips may be controlled by the Russian Mafia. They had let her track the footage to expose any security breaches in their distribution network. The Russians surrender all the information they had collected on her father’s disappearance and the book ends with Cayce coming to terms with his absence; "she was weeping for her century, although whether the one past or the one present she doesn't know".
(Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, the Sprawl trilogy) and continuing with Colin Laney (Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties, the Bridge trilogy
). Ulrike K. Heiser concurs, citing the reassurance Cayce gets from logging-in to Fetish : Footage : Forum after a flight as indicative that she is the latest in a tradition of technomadic Gibsonian protagonists "with rootedness in the virtual rather than the real" who "find their true homes in the non-spatial reaches of digital networks".
In her quest to uncover the meaning of the footage, Cayce is haunted with epistemological doubt; her compulsion to seek answers to whether there is an order to the footage or a creator behind it gives rise to the central thematic element of the novel – the centrality of pattern recognition and corresponding ubiquitous risk of apophenia
in the contemporary world. Post-structural
literary theorist Richard Skeates compared Cayce with Oedipa Maas, the protagonist of Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49
, as detectives interpreting clues but with neither the character nor the reader knowing if there actually is a pattern to be found and, if there is one, whether it is real or conspiracy. Critic Jeremy Pugh proffers that Gibson employs "the precocious Pollard to personify and humanize the uncertain anxiety, optimistic hope, and downright fear many feel when looking to the future."
For cultural historian Jeffrey Melnick, Cayce's obsession with the footage is born out of her exceptional experience of the 9/11 attacks as something which "fundamentally challenged the commercialization of all human experience and emotion". Like the imagery of 9/11, the footage is free of the hegemonic cultural context of the capitalist superstructure and thereby seems to escape commodification, to be beyond "the reified society of brands in which objects assume the status of social relations in contrast to people's objectified ones ... to which Cayce has such an involuntary affinity". Pollard is ever-aware of her complicity as a conduit between the authentic culture of the street and the reconstructed cultural units manifested as products of branded corporations. Philosopher Nikolas Kompridis
casts her desire in terms of a novelty which defies contextualization, positing that Cayce is "yearning for the unconsumably and unsubsumably new", citing a line preceding a description of the footage: "It is as if she participates in the very birth of cinema, that Lumière moment, the steam locomotive about to emerge from the screen, sending the audience fleeing, out into the Parisian night." For Kompridis, the footage is at the crux of Cayce's existential angst as an agent of unearthing novelty and facilitating commodification who also holds out hope for the possibility of a future immune to commodification and instrumentalisation.
William Gibson
William Gibson is an American-Canadian science fiction author.William Gibson may also refer to:-Association football:*Will Gibson , Scottish footballer...
's 2003 novel Pattern Recognition
Pattern Recognition (novel)
Pattern Recognition is a novel by science fiction writer William Gibson published in 2003. Set in August and September 2002, the story follows Cayce Pollard, a 32-year-old marketing consultant who has a psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols...
.
Personal history
Aged 32 during the events of the Pattern Recognition, Cayce lives in New York City. Though named by her parents after Edgar CayceEdgar Cayce
Edgar Cayce was an American psychic who allegedly had the ability to give answers to questions on subjects such as healing or Atlantis while in a hypnotic trance...
, she pronounces her given name "Case". She is a freelance marketing consultant, a coolhunter with an unusual intuitive sensitivity for branding, manifested primarily in her physical aversion
Brand aversion
Brand aversion is an antonym of brand loyalty. It is when a consumer experiences distrust or a disliking of products from a particular brand based on past experiences with that brand and its products, similar to taste aversion....
to particular logo
Logo
A logo is a graphic mark or emblem commonly used by commercial enterprises, organizations and even individuals to aid and promote instant public recognition...
s and corporate mascots. A notable exception to her ability to immediately discern semiotic content in imagery is the succession of images of the September 11 attacks in 2001, for her "an experience outside culture". The attacks had added significance to Cayce's backstory in that they encompassed the disappearance of her father, Win, which in turn impelled her mother, Cynthia, to exploring electronic voice phenomena as her own means of diving patterns in the background static. Cayce is left feeling "ungrieved" for her father until she reviews footage and records of that day tracking his movements until he vanishes.
Apparel
As a consequence of her sensitivity, Cayce dresses in plain clothing she has either bought or rendered unadorned with brand markings of any kind (one possible exception is her "Luggage Label" hip bag, bought from ParcoParco (retailer)
is a chain of department stores primarily in Japan. The first store was established in Tokyo on , and since then the company has opened stores in cities all over Japan....
in Tokyo). These are referred to as "Cayce Pollard Units" or C.P.U.s, a term initially used by her friend Damien, and subsequently by Cayce, although never aloud. They are typically Fruit of the Loom
Fruit of the Loom
Fruit of the Loom is an American company which manufactures clothing, particularly underwear. The company's world headquarters is in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It is currently a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.-Company profile:...
shrunken cotton t-shirts worn with black oversized Levi's 501s, skirts, tights, boots, and a Buzz Rickson MA-1 bomber jacket
MA-1 bomber jacket
The MA-1 bomber jacket was first developed in the mid 1950s. The MA-1 and its predecessor, the B-15 Flight Jacket, were needed at that time because the emergence of the jet age created new requirements for pilot performance, safety and comfort.- History :Prior to the invention of jet aircraft,...
.
In pursuit of the footage
Cayce's role in Pattern Recognition begins with her arrival in London in August 2002, commissioned by marketing firm Blue Ant to judge the effectiveness of a proposed corporate logo for a footwear company. In accordance with her terms, dictated in advance, she rejects the logo but does not explain her judgement. After dinner with some Blue Ant employees, the company founder Hubertus BigendHubertus Bigend
Hubertus Bigend is a fictional character appearing in the later novels of science fiction and literary author William Gibson. Bigend is the antihero of Gibson's Pattern Recognition , Spook Country and Zero History...
propositions Cayce with a new mission: to uncover those responsible for distributing a succession of mysterious, anonymous, artistic film clips ("the footage") on the internet. Cayce had been following the footage and is a participant in Fetish : Footage : Forum, a cult-like online discussion forum hosting a collection of obsessives theorizing on the clips' meaning, setting, sequence and origin. Although wary of corrupting the artistic process and mystery of the clips, she reluctantly accepts.
An acquaintances from the forum passes Cayce a lead of someone who claims to have discovered an encrypted watermark on one clip. After concocting a fake persona to seduce the Tokyo native who claims to know the watermark code, Cayce, travels to Tokyo to meet him and retrieve the code. Thwarting an attempt by two unknown men to steal the code, Cayce escapes and returns to London. There, she learns from Blue Ant that she has been investigated by a shady group of Russians who had wanted her to refuse the job of tracking the footage. Through a chance encounter Cayce meets a pair of London natives dealing in antiquated technological artifacts who put her in contact with a collector, the retired cryptographer and mathematician Hobbs Baranov. Cayce strikes a deal with Baranov: she buys an artifact he dearly covets but cannot afford (a Curta calculator
Curta calculator
The Curta is a small, hand-cranked mechanical calculator introduced in 1948. It has an extremely compact design: a small cylinder that fits in the palm of the hand. It can be used to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and — with more difficulty — square roots and other...
) and in return he decyphers the email address to which the watermark code was sent. Using this email address Cayce makes contact with Stella Volkova, and through their correspondence learns that the legendary maker of the footage is Stella's sister Nora.
Cayce flies to Moscow to meet Stella in person and to witness Nora crafting the footage. It emerges that Nora had been catastrophically injured in a claymore mine explosion that killed their parents years earlier and because of brain damage can only express herself through film. After returning to her hotel, Cayce is drugged and abducted, and wakes up in a mysterious prison facility outside the city. Cayce escapes; exhausted, disoriented and lost, she nearly collapses but is rescued and later brought to the prison where the film is processed. There Bigend, Stella and Nora's uncle Andrei, and the latter's security employees are waiting for her. Over dinner with Cayce, the Russians reveal that they have been spying on her since she posted to a discussion forum speculating that the clips may be controlled by the Russian Mafia. They had let her track the footage to expose any security breaches in their distribution network. The Russians surrender all the information they had collected on her father’s disappearance and the book ends with Cayce coming to terms with his absence; "she was weeping for her century, although whether the one past or the one present she doesn't know".
Literary analysis and significance
Cayce is located by literary critic Pramod Nayar in a line of "information-living" Gibson characters beginning with Bobby NewmarkBobby Newmark
Bobby Newmark is one of the main characters in the William Gibson novel Count Zero. His handle in the Matrix is "Count Zero", from which the novel derives its name. Newmark is one of several Gibson characters who live through information....
(Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, the Sprawl trilogy) and continuing with Colin Laney (Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties, the Bridge trilogy
Bridge trilogy
The Bridge trilogy is a series of novels by William Gibson, his second after the successful Sprawl trilogy. The trilogy comprises the novels Virtual Light , Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties .-Setting:...
). Ulrike K. Heiser concurs, citing the reassurance Cayce gets from logging-in to Fetish : Footage : Forum after a flight as indicative that she is the latest in a tradition of technomadic Gibsonian protagonists "with rootedness in the virtual rather than the real" who "find their true homes in the non-spatial reaches of digital networks".
In her quest to uncover the meaning of the footage, Cayce is haunted with epistemological doubt; her compulsion to seek answers to whether there is an order to the footage or a creator behind it gives rise to the central thematic element of the novel – the centrality of pattern recognition and corresponding ubiquitous risk of apophenia
Apophenia
Apophenia is the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.The term was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad, who defined it as the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness", but it has come to...
in the contemporary world. Post-structural
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
literary theorist Richard Skeates compared Cayce with Oedipa Maas, the protagonist of Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49
The Crying of Lot 49
The Crying of Lot 49 is a novel by Thomas Pynchon, first published in 1966. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, it is about a woman, Oedipa Maas, possibly unearthing the centuries-old conflict between two mail distribution companies, Thurn und Taxis and the Trystero...
, as detectives interpreting clues but with neither the character nor the reader knowing if there actually is a pattern to be found and, if there is one, whether it is real or conspiracy. Critic Jeremy Pugh proffers that Gibson employs "the precocious Pollard to personify and humanize the uncertain anxiety, optimistic hope, and downright fear many feel when looking to the future."
For cultural historian Jeffrey Melnick, Cayce's obsession with the footage is born out of her exceptional experience of the 9/11 attacks as something which "fundamentally challenged the commercialization of all human experience and emotion". Like the imagery of 9/11, the footage is free of the hegemonic cultural context of the capitalist superstructure and thereby seems to escape commodification, to be beyond "the reified society of brands in which objects assume the status of social relations in contrast to people's objectified ones ... to which Cayce has such an involuntary affinity". Pollard is ever-aware of her complicity as a conduit between the authentic culture of the street and the reconstructed cultural units manifested as products of branded corporations. Philosopher Nikolas Kompridis
Nikolas Kompridis
Nikolas Kompridis is a professor at the Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy at the University of Western Sydney. His scholarly work addresses a wide range of subjects in contemporary social and political philosophy, as well as in aesthetics and philosophy of culture...
casts her desire in terms of a novelty which defies contextualization, positing that Cayce is "yearning for the unconsumably and unsubsumably new", citing a line preceding a description of the footage: "It is as if she participates in the very birth of cinema, that Lumière moment, the steam locomotive about to emerge from the screen, sending the audience fleeing, out into the Parisian night." For Kompridis, the footage is at the crux of Cayce's existential angst as an agent of unearthing novelty and facilitating commodification who also holds out hope for the possibility of a future immune to commodification and instrumentalisation.
External links
- Style Icon: Cayce Pollard from William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition", Nogoodforme.com, November 4, 2009.
- "Naomi Klein on how corporate branding has taken over America", The Guardian, January 16, 2010
-
"[ "], New York Observer, February 27, 2005 - "In search of the promised brand" The Observer, May 11, 2003
- "Clothing in Pattern Recognition", chapter from Theresa Wenzel's 2007 masters' dissertation Clothing and Its Connotations in Postmodern American Fiction
- Cayce Pollard as drawn by Jamie McKelvieJamie McKelvie-Career:Since 2003, McKelvie has collaborated with journalist Kieron Gillen on a comic strip for the official Playstation Magazine UK, entitled Save Point. He has worked on a number of projects for Image Comics, including the six-issue series Phonogram...