the Eschaton debacle (pp. 341–342)
Troeltsch, who’s looking for the first time at the idling sedan by West House’s dumpsters and asking if anybody knew anybody who drove a Nunhagen-Aspirin-adverting Ford, is the only upperclass spectator who doesn’t seem utterly silently engrossed.
Context
Schadenfreude spectation caught in the act, from the comfort of the spectation furniture. The upperclassmen watch the game degenerate into children beating each other bloody from the green Gatorade pavilion — the tent whose whole function is "civilians' spectation during exhibition matches" — splayed in patio chairs, and to a man they are "utterly silently engrossed," the lone exception being the one guy distracted by a parked car. Axford says aloud that he "wishes he didn't feel the dark thrill he felt watching Ingersoll get pummeled," and when Troeltsch tries to get up and stop it Pemulis restrains him by the headset cord and tells him to "let them all lie in their own bed." This is the theme's ugliest register: spectation not as passive absorption but as complicity, an audience that finds the catastrophe compelling precisely as catastrophe, that stays seated and engrossed while real children are hurt because the watching is its own dark pleasure. It's the Entertainment's appetite with the mask off — the fun of watching, when what you're watching is somebody's ruin.