the Odalisque colloquy: the U.S.A. type — irony, self-contempt, felt lack

The serial's political anthropology sharpened: Marathe reads the American susceptibility to the passive temptation as national character — it "seems to include a felt lack. A perceived deprivation," and above all "This irony and contempt for selves." Where the myths supply the beautiful lure (the blond-haired woman, the Odalisque), Marathe supplies the political diagnosis of who is vulnerable: the U.S.A. "type," hollowed by irony and self-contempt and a chronic sense of lack, is the nation the Entertainment was built to kill. This is 072's national-diagnosis restated as anthropology — America's weakness is a political-cultural condition, not an accident. (The Odalisque/blond-woman myth content is film-optics'/veil's; landed here is the national-type reading the plan routes to us.)