Gone are the self-conscious commentary and postmodern pyrotechnics of "Genius".
By massing colours into abstract blocks rather than striving after mere mimesis, the artist offers a self-conscious commentary on the possibilities and limits of watercolour.
Andrew Gilstrap's review for PopMatters also complimented "Spotlight on Christmas", calling the song a "clever piece of class-conscious commentary" that provides a "perfect example of [Wainwright's] meticulous toyshop brand of pop".
However, critics like Diane Roberts and David R. Jarraway view Faulkner's use of Southern gothic genre tropes, such as the dilapidated plantation house and the focus on mystery and horror, as self-conscious modernist commentary on man's "warped relationship with the past" and the impossibility of determining true identity.
In the "Scott Pilgrim" comics, the unit of pleasure, the pellet that keeps you reading, is the sly aside, the mumbled afterthought, the bits of knowing, self-conscious meta-commentary sprinkled throughout.
For much of it, he dispenses with his characteristic politesse, which perhaps had been a commentary, conscious or unconscious, on the ostensible limitations placed on a blue-eyed soul singer.
One might think of the "Me" as similar to the conscious super-ego in the commentary that it provides, but one would have to be careful not to carry this analogy too far.
Even when the story briefly sags from barbed commentary to self-conscious oddness in Act II, Mr. Price and his cheeky team consistently mine the script's vein of cynical razzle-dazzle, with a sprightly score that brings to mind the faux simplicity of "Avenue Q".
In fact he takes pains to distance himself from those who engage in a discourse of justice, and makes a conscious attempt to exclude direct moral commentary in his own works.
He documents his audition and turns it into a postmodern commentary on his own self-conscious self-promotion.
It is light years away from the usual dry DVD commentary, and for a company as conscious of its reputation as Disney it is a bit revolutionary.
