Archive for the ‘meta’ tag
Photo versus Metaphoto: Ronosaurus and Omarrr on Instagram
Taking a photograph is not a natural act. We were not born with a compulsion to take pictures and an innate sense of composition. Give a camera to a toddler and many photos will be of strips of sky through blurred, pink fingers. Children must learn how to operate a camera, how to select an interesting subject, and how to frame a picture.
Though it is a common convention in photography to erase the photographer, to pretend he or she does not exist, the photographer is always present. The very act of choosing a subject is a manipulation of reality as it emphasizes a particular object or space above others. This paint spill on the sidewalk was just a paint spill until I took a photograph of it. The act of taking the picture suggests that the paint spill is worth examining as you might an abstract painting and draws attention to shape, color and texture. It changes the spill. A photographer, then, can never capture an unadulterated moment.
(Mural in Lower Haight, San Francisco.)
Actors Playing Themselves
What does it mean when stars portray themselves? Are we getting a glimpse of ”the real person”? Far from it! We learn instead that the actor and the image are not the same person. Few performances are as artificial as those in which actors play themselves.
In an interview with the acclaimed actor Michael Cain, Michael Parkinson said, ”Yours is the most impersonated voice in the business.” Cain responds, “Oh yeah, everyone– I– I can do it.”
“Can you do it?”
“Yeah, yeah . . . ‘Ello, My name is Michael Cain.” (When he says his name, it sounds like “my cocaine.”) The interviewer and the studio audience laugh. Michael Cain does not. He says, rather seriously, “I sound like a bloody moron.” What does it mean when an actor criticizes his own image?
Doesn’t it drive a wedge between the man and the star? If he can step outside of his own persona in order to criticize that persona, then he is not that person. As audience members, we often forget that distinction. We forget because we want to believe in stardom and we want to believe in stardom, so that we put ourselves in that star’s head for a while and imagine what it would be like to be famous.
Metamucil: Making Meta-Shit Happen
If metafiction is fiction about fiction and metapainting is painting about painting, “Metamucil” must be mucil about mucil, right? But what is mucil?
(Photo borrowed from the hysterical website de-motivational.com.)
Like This!: The Liking of the Liking of Liking
I just liked a new Facebook page called, “Liking.” I liked it before I liked it and I still like it. Turns out my friend and colleague Ned Buskirk set up the page. I liked it even before I knew that, but I like it even more now. However, I cannot like it again. I can only like it once. You should like it too. Why not?
The “Like” button on Facebook has changed the verb. Before Facebook, “like” was a positive emotion one felt towards a person or object, but now “liking” means pressing a button. Doing so means you like something in the traditional sense, so the like button refers back to the furry and friendly emotion. The button hasn’t replaced the feeling, so there is no reason not to like it.
Don’t Invalidate My Existence: A Meta-Dream
Sometimes I realize I am dreaming. Once, my college friend Robert Lochner and I were in line at the check-out counter of a grocery store. I told Robert I was dreaming as the cashier began to ring me up and that everyone in my dream was a figment of my imagination and that they would cease to exist as soon as I woke up. Robert, who was familiar with my philosophical posturing, rolled his eyes, but kept quiet, waiting for his turn at the register. The cashier, however, got very upset.
“I don’t care what you believe,” she said, pointing at me, “but don’t you invalidate my existence! You hear me? You can think whatever you want–I don’t care–but it is extremely, extremely rude to tell someone they don’t exist. How would you feel if I told you were just a character in my dream? A figment of my imagination? How would you like that?”
That is all I remember. I woke up. My friend Robert survived the dream although I haven’t heard from him in years. I was about to say that the cashier did not survive, but I have told this story several times and now I have written it down and sent it out into the cloud. The cashier doggedly continues her existence in spite of my insensitive comments. She exists. She is real.
Watching the Watcher: McMenamy x M.A.C., a Meta-Movie
In this short metafilm by Miles Aldridge, the viewer watches supermodel Kristen McMenamy, “the cosmetics muse,” watching a movie. We never see what she is seeing. We only see her face (and bold makeup, hair and clothing). We are the watchers that watch the watcher. We enjoy her enjoyment and get off on her catharsis.
Repainting the Tenderloin: Mona Caron’s Meta-Mural
[See the artist's own comments about her mural below.]
Where did the name “The Tenderloin,” come from? Stories abound, but the one I first heard was that the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco was so full of homeless people, drug addicts and prostitutes that the police get “hazard pay” to work there, which makes it possible for them to afford the better cuts of meat. Another story is that the police can afford fancier meat because they accept bribes from the entrepreneurs in the hood. Perhaps the name is a reference to the soft, vicious underbelly of San Francisco. Or to the tender loins of the prostitutes who work there. Or did we borrow the name from New York City’s Tenderloin, which has a similar reputation? Whatever the origin, the Tenderloin is not considered the choicest cut of San Francisco’s neighborhoods.
Nevertheless, some organizations and individuals are working to better this shady district. Mona Caron, one of my favorite muralists in San Francisco, painted a mural (“Windows into the Tenderloin”) on the corner of Golden Gate and Jones Streets not only to brighten the neighborhood, but also to offer a vision of transformation to the troubled are. In her mural, she shows how murals can improve a neighborhood, so her Tenderloin mural is a meta-mural, a mural about murals.
(Photo from Mona Caron’s website.)
A Meta-Island or a Meta-Lake?
Is this a meta-island? Or a meta-lake? Can nature be self reflective? Look down these photos from Taal Volcano in Taal Lake in the Philipines to see: “An island within a lake within an island within a lake within an island within the ocean.” And we can add one more island, as the earth is often called an island. We often compare space to water with metaphoric language like “The earth floats through space.” Couldn’t we also call the solar system an island? Could interstellar star dust be called a lake? What about a galaxy floating in dark matter? How far out could we zoom?
Are all these lakes in islands in lakes examples of mise en abyme? The phrase coined by Andre Gide literally means “into the abyss,” and describes the work within the work, for example, the play within the play in Hamlet. It certainly seems like you could zoom forever in or out of the abyss in this sequence. Can’t we find a puddle on the littlest island? Isn’t there a rock in the puddle? Isn’t there a drop of water on the rock? Isn’t there a fleck of dust on the drop? Isn’t there a cluster of molecules on the fleck?
(Check out Google Maps. Photos from Organic Green Roots’ Facebook page.)
Sorry, Bus: Meta-Graffiti
This piece of graffiti is metagraffiti because it is self-referential: “I am sorry bus 4 writ[ing] here.” (Not sure about that last word, actually.) Why would someone write this? Consider for a moment what this self-reflective scrawl might mean.
(Photo by Omar Rodriguez-Rodriguez.)
Hisstory Repleats Herself: James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake
One of the most metafictional books: a story about a story that is repeated endlessly, the one story that is all stories at once, the cyclical story of the rise and fall of humanity.
Joyce essentially invented his own mishmash of languages, making the book notoriously difficult to read, but if you drink several glasses of Irish whiskey, smoke a few bowls and squint a lot the book becomes more readable . . . even funny! You should think of the novel as a great collection of puns.
Here is the first line: “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.” Joyce packs in meaning by using puns and allusions (which are themselves a kind of pun). On a cursory count I find at least fourteen. “Past,” for example, is the preposition as in “the river flows past the church.” It also refers to the past, a central theme of the work. It can also be a homonym for the past tense of the verb “to pass”: passed. A Reader’s Guide to Finnegan’s Wake by William York Tindall explains some of the allusions: ”‘Riverrun,’ the first word is the central word of the book; for Anna Livia’s Liffey, the feminine creative principle, is the river of time and life. The Liffey flows past the church of Adam and Eve (reversed here to imply temptation, fall, and renewal) and into Dublin Bay, where . . . it circulates up to Howth, the northern extremity of the bay. ‘Eve and Adam’s’ unites Dublin with Eden and one time with another” (Tindall 30).
