Archive for the ‘metafiction’ tag
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.
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).
Understanding is Making Up Stories about Chaos
(From my upcoming book Narrative Madness, edited by Katie Fox. Look for it on a Kindle, iPad or Amazon near you.)
We, as language users, constantly name ourselves, others, settings, actions, and events in an order that makes sense to us, ignoring the rest of the universe. We may not always use Don Quixote’s romantic language or share his chivalric plot line, but he is only doing what all of us do: trying to make sense of the noise and confusion of life.
The Artificial “I”
(From my upcoming book Narrative Madness, edited by Katie Fox. Look for it soon on an iPad, Kindle or Amazon near you!)
All names are fictions, including the one that is closest to myself, that intimate name of names, my name for myself. For even the precious word “I” — which rises like a monolith above our heads, promising singularity and unity — is an invented word, rather than a natural concept.
“I” is not a person. “I” is a letter. “I” is a word. Letters and words carry with them traces of their history in the shapes of the letters, tracks that lead back in time. Our letter comes from the Egyptian pictogram of an arm with a hand, which stood for the long A-sound, later incorporated in the proto-Semitic language because their word for arm started with that sound (as ours does), which we can read to mean that “I” is that one that uses the arm to do things; I is the one who acts.
A derivation of the letter can be found in most Semitic alphabets. The letter Yud – Yodh, Yod, Ye or Jodh – can be found as the tenth letter in most Semitic alphabets, including Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Persian and Arabic. In Hebrew, two Yuds in a row represent Adonai, a name of God. Mystical significance is attached to the name because it is formed by the smallest letter. So no matter how small I am, I still have mystical power. The Phoenicians wrote the symbol diagonally, like a backwards drunken F. The Greeks righted the symbol and turned it into a solid, stable Doric column, the symbol we recognize today. The Greek letter is used in the English expression, “not one iota,” from a clause in the New Testament: “until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law” (Mathew 5:18), so “i” has been associated with exactness. (Information gleaned from Wikipedia).
In the Name of the Book, In the Name of Cervantes, Amen
(From my book Narrative Madness, edited by Kt Fox. Coming soon to a Kindle or iPad near you!)
The Name of the Book
When deciding to read a book, the first questions we ask are: “What is it called?” and “Who wrote it?” Easy, as the answers are printed on the fat novel to my right: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Just two names and the preposition “by.” We can almost pass over without a thought. How much meaning could there be in so few words?
