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Mario's Onantiad gala: the openly jejune maker

quote

Mario’s openly jejune version of his late father’s take on the rise of O.N.A.N. and U.S. Experialism

Context

The maker's register against the audience's. Mario's puppet-show is "openly jejune" — sincere, unironic, a literal kids'-show frame ("Thanks everybody and I hope you like it," his eight plain words) laid over genuinely dark geopolitical history, and he "neither likes the moment nor dislikes it," free of the self-regard that would make the display ironic. The irony in the room is entirely on the reception side; none of it is in the making. That gap is the scene's register-engine: a single-entendre creator who means his childish frame straight, and a sophisticated audience that can only metabolize the content by heckling it. Mario builds the thing sincerely; the room absolves itself watching it. (The Gentle/Experialism substance is nationalism-onan's; landed here is only the sincere-maker-vs-ironic-audience register.)

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