From anticonfluentialism to unironic melodrama "conducive to self-forgetting"

pivotal · ~YW–YTSDB (2002–2004), the late leap

• When: JOI's late period — the last several projects, ~YW to his YTSDB (2004) death
• What: The thread's turning point and its courage. JOI abandoned the technical fireworks and anticonfluential abstraction, "willingly took the risk of appearing amateurish," and tried to make characters actually move — "so desperate to make something that ordinary U.S. audiences might find entertaining and diverting and conducive to self-forgetting that he had had professionals and amateurs alike emoting wildly all over the place." Joelle names it "the leap to narratively anticonfluential but unironic melodrama she helped prolong the arc of." That word "self-forgetting" is the through-line from the Bernini thesis (event 12) straight to the Entertainment (event 17). He called the films "entertainments" — "ironically about half the time" (though see Dating notes: her later account to Steeply says always).