Is Infinite Jest about to get the full Ulysses treatment? I fell asleep writing that sentence because debates about canonization are boring but probably, yeah, it is in the midst of canonization. It did 25 pull-ups in under a minute and ran the mile in under 9 minutes and jumped over 5 feet from a standing position, which are the requirements for canonization joining my high school’s varsity track team as an 8th grader. Oops.
Here’s what isn’t boring: Poor Yorick Entertainment, which promises to “attempt to bring some kind of visual life to the fictional filmmaker’s [James O. Incandenza] body of work, as well as the world of Infinite Jest.” Here’s more from the site’s creator, Chris Ayers:
Incandenza’s filmic body of work is detailed in the endnotes of Infinite Jest. While many of the films are inconsequential to the plot of the book, the story does revolve around the rumored existence of Incandenza’s last film, titled “Infinite Jest”, a film so entertaining that the viewer loses any desire to do anything other than watch it.
The film, or samizdat, as it is referred to, is sought after by a Quebecois separatist group known as Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (Wheelchair Assassins), for use as a weapon of terrorism against the newly formed Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.).
Only a few of the films in Incandenza’s body of work have any real substantive relation to the central plot. Some are described in detail while others are only mentioned in passing.
We’re a bit late to this party, but Ayers has done a really stunning job bringing parts of Wallace’s novel to life. Here are some of our favorite images:
Ayers has also created visualizations for the Whataburger Southwest Junior Invitational, The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, and a bunch of other things that pop up in the novel. Finally, it’s worth noting that Ayers also provides very sharp commentary about the images and the novel itself. Here’s Ayers, talking about his logo for Interlace Entertainment:
One of the central themes of “Infinite Jest” is how people relate to filmed entertainment; how they perceive it, absorb it and injest it and define their lives by it. In the dystopian world of the novel, the monolithic company who delivers this entertainment to the public is InterLace TelEntertainment
“Infinite Jest” was published in 1996 and likely took years to write. Taking that into consideration, Wallace eerily predicted streaming media like Hulu, Netflix and On Demand roughly fifteen years before that technology became viable.
InterLace’s goal is to remove the passivity of entertainment viewing by offering, via streaming or “pulses” into your “Teleputer” (T.P.), content from the big four networks. InterLace also offers cartridges for purchase. Many of James Incandeza’s films are available through both of these delivery methods.
The name of the company likely comes from the television technology of interlacing, which has been in use in the United States since 1934 on Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) televisions. The process involves breaking a singe frame into two frames known as fields, which are projected a fraction of a second apart, creating a smooth motion while reducing flicker. Pausing an interlaced video will often result in a jagged edge as both fields (and two different states of motion) are presented at the same time. This is reflected in my design for the Interlace Telentertainment logo.
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