In a world of billboards and ad spots, and more to the point, a world of product placement, growing ever more subtle, as demonstrated by Trans in Pattern Recognition, it seems that there’s no way to understand Western culture without being so thoroughly exposed to advertising that corporate mores don’t draw one in to a world where one is an object of the market. Who then, has the ability to objectively observe markets in action without abstracting them to the degree of economics? My answer, obviously, is that Cayce, with her absurd sensitivity to trademarks, logos, and anything chic, is the ultimate outsider amidst the commercial world she physically inhabits. She has the equivalent of a sixth sense, which allows, yea, motivates her to note and avoid that which is intended to implicitly draw her into consumerism.
Yet, even with an effectively superhuman ability to avoid marketing, Cayce has to go through an amazing amount of work to maintain her position on the outside. Her clothes, no doubt difficult to acquire, giving her specifications, must be trimmed and filed carefully (and sometimes confusedly), until they gain the status of CPUs. Her home, as we hear of it secondhand, is nearly ascetic. It’s difficult to obtain creature comforts without the logos that mark them as luxurious. And her outsider status marks her as an outsider. Her anti-fashion statement may appear indie, but doesn’t blend into any particular culture, and would probably impede any effort she made to gain status in any particular sphere. It seems that her separation from any one structure, any culture, makes power irrelevant to her world. She certainly responds negatively, or at best, ambivalently, to any situations where any power differential is imposed on her.
Perhaps as an outcome of her separation from the world around her, Cayce can see patterns in the mobs around her. Her ability to spot emerging trends goes beyond her benevolent pathology to a type of pattern recognition that, while related to her allergy, is consciously cultivated, and at which she also clearly excels. My question is, then, what would it take for any member of Pattern Recognition’s audience to stand far enough above the fray to note the patterns as Cayce does? Or is that only a divine perspective now?