The Entertainment-Studies discourse: the "catatonic hero," the naïveté thesis, the InterLace medium

texture · YPW (2005) / recalled YDAU

• When: Hal's essays date YPW (2005, the American-hero paper) and Y.P.W. (the ad-industry paper, "May of Y.P.W."); read against YDAU
• What: The critical-cultural field the oeuvre sits in, written by JOI's son. Hal's seventh-grade Entertainment-Studies essays trace the North American hero from action to "reaction" to a prophesied "hero of non-action, the catatonic hero, the one beyond calm, divorced from all stimulus" — a startling premonition of the Entertainment's effect; his ad-industry paper narrates the collapse of broadcast TV and the rise of InterLace's home-only, "inherently pro-active, consumer-driven" cartridge market — the exact delivery-medium the terminal Entertainment exploits; and The American Century as Seen Through a Brick is read for "its unsubtle thesis that naïveté is the last true terrible sin in the theology of millennial America." The son theorizes the culture the father's art anatomized. See the tech thread (InterLace).