The "sub/inversions": metacinematic genre parody ('Blood Sister,' 'The Night Wears a Sombrero')

pivotal · B.S.–YTSDB (the genre-cycle)

• When: UNDATED as a mode; the named commercial genre films run B.S. through YTMP (2003) per n024
• What: At "certain dark points" JOI made films in commercial genre modes so exaggerated they became, to the cognoscenti, "'sub/inversions of the genres'" — ironic metacinematic parody. Blood Sister: One Tough Nun (avenging-cleric splatter) was one of his few commercial hits — screened at full length by the E.T.A.s in the 11-Nov viewing sessions (138/140) — and Hal "has no idea that this piece of entertainment actually germinated out of James O. Incandenza's one brief and unpleasant experience with Boston AA, in the B.S. mid-'90s" (132): like L-TC (event 7), the parody is private history in genre costume. The Night Wears a Sombrero is a "Langesque metaWestern" Hal rates his best in the vein. Hal's discomfort is the thread's own tension: JOI "always seemed to get seduced by the very commercial formulae he was trying to invert." Joelle's colder verdict on the parodies: "the finger-exercises of someone promising who refused to really sit down and play something." See Joelle's timeline (event 19) (the Madame Psychosis credits inside this cycle).