The audience-obsession subphase: 'The Medusa v. the Odalisque,' 'The Joke,' 'Cage III'

pivotal · UNDATED (B.S., "anticonfluential middle period")

• When: UNDATED ("his anticonfluential middle period," per Hal, scene 085)
• What: A whole vein of the oeuvre turns the lens on the act of watching. 'The Medusa v. the Odalisque' stages a fake Ford's-Theater playlet in which two visually lethal mythic females duel with mirrors while the on-screen audience turns to stone; Cage III—Free Show has spectators of grotesque degradations swell "into gigantic eyeballs in chairs"; The Joke (his "first truly controversial project") trains two cameras on the theater's own audience and projects them back onto the screen until, self-conscious and hostile, they leave. The films' contempt for their own spectators is the point — and the seed of the terminal Entertainment's inverse (a show no spectator can leave). See the samizdat thread for the Entertainment-as-terror-object.