Master copies and the temptation — "Marathe dryly laughed. ‘Confiscated from razzles…"
Marathe dryly laughed. ‘Confiscated from razzles of Berkeley, Boston. But who can know what is on them? Who can study the Entertainment while detached?’ […] ‘But just between us two, though. Tête to tête. You’ve never been even slightly tempted? I mean personally. You the person. Wife’s condition be damned. Kids be damned. Just for a second, slip into wherever you guys keep it and load it and have a quick look? To see what’s all the fuss, the irresistible pull of the thing?’
Context
The scene's film-theory joke stated by Marathe in one line: there is no critical distance from this film — spectation and study are mutually exclusive, so every archive of confiscated copies is an archive of unwatchable objects. Steeply's counter is to make it personal, the "quick look" temptation pitched in pure moviegoer idiom ("see what's all the fuss"). Marathe answers neither time; what he offers instead is the videophonic-pulse story of his father's death — a screen-transmission that kills, the family's own private Entertainment precedent (no optics apparatus in that passage; noted here as context only).