Smith's work has often pushed the limits of entertainment, comedy and art with unconventional pacing, repetition, precise timing, subversive obtuseness, and a blurring of fiction and reality.Casavecchia, Barbara. "Michael Smith," Frieze, May 5, 2009. Retrieved December 3, 2021.Carroll, Mary Ellen. "Michael Smith," Modern Painters, February 2008, p. 92–3. He often lampoons the practices and promises of the entertainment industry, art world and American capitalism, exploring themes of fitting in, ambition, the obsolescence of "just past" motifs and tastes, failure and aging. Some writers contend that his work prefigured genres and works such as "mockumentaries", reality TV and The Truman Show, and adult-oriented "kid shows" (e.g., South Park); his art is sometimes compared to that of anarchic, hard-to-categorize creators like Andy Kaufman or Albert Brooks. Most of Smith's work has involved two characters: his everyman or "bland man" performance persona, "Mike," or an oversized infant called "Baby Ikki."
