the head-cock, consummately U.S.A.

Cynicism as national body-language. Marathe reads Steeply's tossed-off head-cock as "a way of cynicism that seemed to Marathe consummately U.S.A." — the ironic-cynical stance has become so thoroughly the American register that it is legible in a single unconscious tilt of the head, a physical tic a foreigner can identify as a nationality. It rhymes precisely with 035's sneer "Québecers found repellent on Americans" and 103's "absolution via irony is foreign to them": irony is not merely a style but a posture, recognizable across the border in the smallest gesture. (The Entertainment / samizdat-holography-theory substance is entertainment-self's / film-optics'; landed here is cynicism-as-national-gesture.)