Spectacle vs Plot Device

The films chosen for this week were an interesting combination of examples of metacinema. They both showcased very deliberate uses of the technique, but were quite different in their implementation of it.

Sherlock Jr. is very subtle in some of its uses of metacinematic techniques, while others were quite obvious. The most obvious instance being the scene immediately after Buster Keaton's character falls asleep in the projectionist booth in which he dreams of himself being within the movie that is being shown, more specifically the portion where the scenery around his character keeps changing. This scene draws attention to, and essentially creates a joke out of the process of editing. The editing of the scenery around the character is the main draw of this scene.

What I found more interesting than this scene though, were the moments that didn't draw as much attention to themselves. Those being when Keaton runs into the wall alongside the staircase when he is following the man he is investigating, and when Keaton is appearing to look at himself in what is assumed and made to look like a mirror, but ends up just being a doorway. These moments are also great metacinematic moments because they draw attention to the point of view of the camera and how it limits our view on the scene.

Sherlock Jr., as a whole, uses these moments as essentially a special effects demonstration. It creates a spectacle of what is happening within the scene. This is where Peeping Tom is starkly different in form. The metacinematic moments in Peeping Tom were generally much more direct in how they were presented, but at the same time were used as a central plot device. The entirety of the film revolved around, and moved forward solely on the fact that Mark was creating films showcasing the women he was murdering. It was never done to create a spectacle or to draw attention to itself outside of advancing the story. The moment I found to be most interesting and "meta" was the scene in which Mark is filming the stand-in actress in the studio. At one moment, the two were within a film studio in which the actress was [mock] filming him, who in turn was filming her.