JOI's father delivers the garage monologue (p. 163)
not as I take care to bend over backwards way, way out of my way to let you know I see you recognize you am aware of you as a body care about what might go on behind that big flat face bent over a homemade prism.
Context
The boy at home is habitually "bent over a homemade prism" — light-bending as the child's private world while the father performs seeing him. Carlisle's generational table reads the scene exactly along this axis: Sr.'s physical affinity with objects against Jr.'s optical affinity with light, actor begetting filmmaker (and, a generation on, Mario behind the Bolex) — the theme's whole lineage keyed to details like this one.