Hall of Mirrors: Jodie Foster plays “Jodie Foster” in a short play written and directed by Jodie Foster(?)

The histriologist has parsed many a complex text in his barren time but few as tangled as Jodie Foster's much bruited Golden Globe's speech (“performance piece”? “character monologue”? “comic skit”?) in which the convolutions, and interlocking convolutions, of the concept, writing, and performance produce myriad and redundant layers of irony (and/or masks) that are no more or less obscure for being redundant.

This is the scenario: in accepting an award, a veteran actor (and director) makes – reading from a teleprompter – a speech notable for its forced garrulousness, faux bonhomie, lame (or poorly delivered) gags, and, most of all, arch explanation of why the honoree is not directly addressing an issue she [IMO quite reasonably] feels is not really the public's concern.

But, but, but ...the circumlocutionary avoidance is so ostentatious and so teasingly near-explicit that it draws far, far more attention to what is (just barely) unsaid than could possibly have been achieved had the actor simply noted, “And I want to most of all thank my partner, the love-of-my-life, ____.”

To reduce the complexities to their most simplistic, the question for the viewer is: was the forced-ness and faux-ness qualities of the performance – i.e. of the “real” Jodie Foster being under-rehearsed and/or nervous and reading a clumsy and/or convoluted script? Or are the forced-ness and faux-ness deliberate and intended elements essential to the high-concept of the piece and character -- “Jodi Foster” -- performed by the real actor/author, Jodi Foster?

Because the real Jodi Foster is not only a hugely gifted and experienced performer perfectly able to smoothly deliver a speech but also an educated and pretty sophisticated mind,  it is not so far-fetched that what we saw was a meticulously conceived, rehearsed, and delivered performance-piece meant to provoke exactly the debate, discussion, and questions that it has in fact produced, and produced to a degree that a more direct declaration might not have achieved -- because, really, acknowledging her sexual preference would not (for a number of reasons) in itself be today as charged or, in social or career terms, as consequential an act as it might have been five or ten years ago.

I will never know the lady's true intentions nor need to; she is by all accounts happy and I'm enough of an admirer to be happy for her. The Histriologist is not interested in the psychology of the celebrity but in understanding the work and whether there are in the work details which help the reader/detective untangle the mystery.