Marathe and Steeply: the lethal-pleasure myths (pp. 529–530)

The samizdat's own internal film surfaces here as a living Québecois myth. L'Odalisque de Sainte Thérèse is so beautiful that "mortal Québecois eyes can't take it," and whoever looks turns to gemstone — a "Medusa in reverse," killing by beauty instead of horror. This is the figure JOI staged inside The Medusa v. the Odalisque (085), the fatal-image playlet whose on-screen audience petrifies from watching; but the myth precedes and outlives the film, which is the point. The lethal look — the sight so pleasurable it fixes and finishes the viewer — is not JOI's invention but a story the culture already carried, a truth about spectation the myths encode: that there is a beauty at which the act of looking is itself the death. The Entertainment gives the Odalisque a cartridge.