The Law of Diminishing Returns

This chapter tracks Todd Solondz's canny cinematic homeopathy with the nation's overarching economic decline under several rubrics. The first is the built environment of his films, interested as they are in the aesthetically valueless architecture of “junkspace.” Next, the chapter examines his stylistic posture of “left classicism,” which borrows key aesthetic principles from the dominant industry, only to drain them of their usual affirmative functions. His several ontological gestures of “eternal recurrence,” offered with the twist of a general decline in standards, are then explored. Afterward, the chapter discusses his determined interest in the dynamic opposition between playful sequences of fantasy and escape and unendurable long takes of truly intolerable material. Finally, his thematic preoccupation with the excremental function of the “gift of shit,” which he analyzes in an exhaustive fashion, is studied.