n145 O.J. interview: the M-v-O reception
the film-establishment theory-queers were holding their noses and saying Incandenza’s still mired in this late-century self-referencing unentertaining formalism and unrealistic abstraction
Context
The charge that sets the whole dialectic spinning: the maker of the Entertainment was, in his lifetime, dismissed as unentertaining. After The Medusa v. the Odalisque and The Joke, the critics hold their noses at Incandenza's "unentertaining formalism" — and the sting of that word, from the man whose defining flaw was that his art wouldn't compel an audience, is what the theme keeps circling. The revenge he cooks up (Found Drama) is beside our point; what matters here is the reception itself, the audience/critical verdict that his films fail to give pleasure. It's the negative space the fatal cartridge fills: the artist accused of never sucking anyone in finally makes the thing that sucks its viewers in past the power to stop.