Gately and the wraith — "A magically entertaining toy to dangle…"
A magically entertaining toy to dangle at the infant still somewhere alive in the boy, to make its eyes light and toothless mouth open unconsciously, to laugh. To bring him ‘out of himself,’ as they say. The womb could be used both ways.
Context
The mechanism and the double-edge in four sentences. The Entertainment is imagined as a toy dangled at the infant still alive inside a person — an object engineered to make the eyes light and the toothless mouth open, to bring the watcher "out of himself." And then the line the whole theme pivots on: "The womb could be used both ways." The same maternal-infantile lure that could draw a self out of its solipsistic womb could just as easily draw it back in and seal it there; the device that unlocks the cage is the device that locks it. This is the Entertainment's purpose-as-artifact at its most naked — a womb-toy for the regressed infant in everyone, whose power to release and whose power to entomb are one power. The 159 Death-Mother lens is the same womb, filmed; here it is named.