Blood Sister's finale: the cringe at unsubtlety
cold-cocking the Mother Superior with a large decorative mahogany Christian object so symbolically obvious it needn’t even be named, the object’s symbolic unsubtlety making both Hal and Bridget Boone cringe
Context
The ironist's aesthetic, diagnosed by what it flinches from: unsubtlety. What makes Hal and Boone wince isn't gore or nonsense — it's a crucifix used as a bludgeon, meaning worn too plainly on the sleeve. The metaparody's whole function is to protect its sophisticated viewers from having to feel the crucifix mean anything; the archness is a pre-emptive defense against the on-the-nose. Irony as the connoisseur's flinch from earnestness — the cultivated cringe that lets you register a symbol while refusing to be moved by it. (Cf. 138's metaparody "designed to have nothing really felt going on.")