Week Two - Lynda M.

The Eternal Frame - Ant Farm & T.R. Uthco - 1976

At first I didn’t really understand why I was viewing this. I chose to watch this last. Not for any particular reason. It became apparent to me that this had something in common with the other films. I didn’t realize it until they started doing the reenactments of JFK’s assassinations. One by one more people would show up to watch. One lady even claimed that she wish she had he camera with her. There were camera’s recording everything, in turn, there was also a camera recording the people recording everything. I find this most similar the “White Bear” were all of the people have their cell phones out recording.

 Man Bites Dog, Black Mirror

This film was pretty morbid. It was documentary style and seemed extremely real. I kept telling myself that there was no way that they could legally film this if it were real. You could tell that the crew was freaked out by the main character’s actions in the beginning. They seemed to be careful around him during the whole film, worried that he could flip out at any time. When the crew was hesitant to get shellfish with him I was a little worried for them. Just because this man was so unpredictable. He didn’t hesitate to kill anyone. He seemed to enjoy being filmed. After awhile, the crew seemed to start taking part in what he was doing. They accepted his cash, they helped toss and hide bodies, they all raped a woman, and most of all, and they continued to let everything happen. They didn’t try to stop the man once. They were just so wrapped up in getting everything on film.

Season 2 Ep. 2, "White Bear"

So, this woman wakes up every single day without any clue as to what is going on. She has no idea who she is or where she is. The camera follows her almost in a handheld manner, but not as shaky. Anyway, she wakes up and goes outside—all we see are people on their mobile phones recording her. I just wanted to scream at everyone and tell them to wake up. She pleads for help but everyone is absorbed by his or her phones. Which is kind of how it is today, in the “real world.” So many people are quick to film something, while very few are there to jump in and help.

            Later we find out that this woman is being punished for filming the murder of a little girl. The people want her to suffer over and over again. They have an elaborate park and set up to make this happen. Her memory is erased every night until she wakes up and goes through everything again. She is also not supposed to look at any phones while she is going through this because they seem to trigger memories. I wasn’t expecting everyone to be watching when it was first revealed. I found myself feeling sympathetic for this woman even though I knew what she did was horrible. We live in a weird world where people will go and watch assassinations on YouTube and whatnot. I’ve just never really had any interest in that.

Week 2

The Voyeuristic Spectacle

It is easy to confuse what we see on television, or in movies, or on the internet as reality. It looks like reality, it acts like reality, and it feels like reality. You know for a fact that everything that you are seeing did happen, but at the same time the thing that you are literally viewing is merely a visual representation of it, placed there for us, the audience. Everything that we see is a result of that mediator, the image. Visual media is the link between what did happen and what the person who put it there wants us to see. As stated in the reenactments in "The Eternal Frame", we live in a world now where we think that we know the things that we see on screen, but in reality what is happening is just a cultural reaction to a series of images. It is an illusion that does not always accurately depict. The person or group of people responsible for the images has not always deliberately deceived us, but, as Guy Debord states, "It is far better viewed as a weltanschauung (world view) that has been actualized, translated into the material realm ­­ a world view transformed into an objective force." There is no way to accurately bring us to that place in time without inadvertently becoming spectacle. When it comes to translation, in any form, be it with language or with transforming real life events into video, something will always be missing. Something is lost in translation. What truly alters the reality is our own reaction to it as the audience. We are naturally drawn to spectacle of any variety. As Laura Mulvey writes about in our assigned reading, one such example of this can be found in how genders are represented. Film as a medium is very susceptible to manipulation. Often we find that women are represented as a subject for the active male gaze. She is represented as both a literal and a symbolic representation of our fantasies. 

The same ideas hold true beyond gender differences. Everything that we watch is based on some sort of spectacle; something that we want to see but are not necessarily always able. In the film, "Man Bites Dog", we get an experience not unlike that that we saw last week in "Peeping Tom". In the film, we follow some documentarians as they themselves follow around a sociopathic serial killer. The film sort of reminds me of the more modern film, "Nightcrawler", in the sense that it plays on our voyeuristic tendencies. Even if we are horrified by something, we want to see it. It is the car crash that we can't look away from. Real, horrible events have turned into spectacle for the curious mind. This impulse to capture real events can be deconstructed to it's cultural roots.

I saved discussing the episode of Black Mirror, "White Bear" for last, because it perfectly consolidates all of these ideas. In the final twist of the episode, we learn that the girl that we have been following the entire episode as been lied to. Everything that she has experienced has all been an elaborate hoax for the spectacle of eager viewers. This woman (a convicted killer) has been repeatedly tormented by being a part of some kind of twisted amusement park ride for the benefit of more curious audience members. Like the documentarians in "Dog Bites Man", the viewers of this "Justice Park" are drawn to the voyeuristic fantasy of being able to watch from an outside perspective this girl's torture. It is reality turned commodity. It is a fabrication, no matter how convincing, made for our benefit.

SHAME. 

week_1_response

Sherlock Jr. and Peeping Tom are great examples of the two very different approaches to “metacinema.” Sherlock Jr. approaches cinema with a novel sensibility, exploiting editing techniques in the name of slapstick humor. Peeping Tom, on the other hand, explores the psychology behind the desire to make a film, while also using the creation of a film to drive the narrative.

Sherlock Jr. is a good film to discuss first, because it explores of cinematic devices in a lighthearted manner. Buster Keaton’s goal is not to make the audience contemplate the process of film making, but to elicit a chuckle. Beyond the protagonist working in a theater, the film has little to do with examining cinematic techniques. The examination of film comes during a dream sequence, which only serves to make Keaton’s approach more novel. It’s understandable that the scene is depicted as a dream, it makes the ensuing chaos easier to digest for a 1920s audience. In the scene, Keaton’s character has an out of body experience after dozing off while projecting a film. At first, his fantasy is pretty standard: he enters the world of the film he’s projecting and assumes the role of a detective. The other characters in the projected film transform into individuals Keaton’s character knows in real life and their relationships in the dream are exaggerated versions of their relationships outside the dream. What ensues is a series of sight gags. The audience becomes aware that Keaton is stuck in a film through a shot that depicts an theater screen within the frame. The film that Keaton is stuck in begins a series of hard cuts. Keaton remains in the same space as he was in the previous shots, while the background abruptly changes, putting Keaton in some dangerous situations. Eventually, Keaton is woken up by his love interest. They reconcile (following a misunderstanding that happened earlier in the film) and Keaton takes romantic cues from the actors on the screen.

Peeping Tom is vastly different, both in it’s exploration of the idea of a “film within film” and in it’s mood. Peeping Tom wouldn’t be considered humorous unless viewed by a sadist or sociopath. The main character, Mark, is obsessed with filming women moments before their deaths (at his hand). The police search for the person responsible for the killings and eventually begin to close in on Mark as their prime suspect. Peeping Tom turns the camera itself into a weapon. Mark uses a modified tripod to murder his victims and the style of cinematography he employs are aggressive and suffocating (extreme closeups of the victims’ faces). The metaphor of camera as weapon is pushed further by the style of the point-of-view shots throughout. When Mark is filming, the point of view is sometimes shown through the camera’s viewfinder which has cross-hairs similar to a sniper rifle. The camera becomes intrusive: an object that evokes fear, terror, and suspense. The camera is relentless. The viewer is uncomfortably forced into Mark’s shoes. The major downfall of Peeping Tom is that Mark’s motivation to kill (and to film his murders) is accounted for. Mark’s father was a psychologist who performed experiments on him that dealt with fear. His father also filmed these experiments. Without this explanation, Peeping Tom might have made the audience question whether Mark’s motivation was caused by a fascination with film or if film played an ancillary role to his urge to kill. Despite this (perceived) misstep, the audience is still forced to evaluate the social impact of the presence of a camera.

Matt Plain: An Introduction

Hi class,

My name is Matt Plain. I'm a senior in the film program. I don't really have a favorite film or video. The environment in which one views a motion picture has an impact on the viewer's opinion of the motion picture. So, my favorite viewing experiences were watching "The Departed" at a packed budget cinema in the front row while the audience was cheering/booing at the screen, watching "Drive" at a budget cinema after eating a marijuana cookie that kicked in when the movie got excessively violent, and viewing Cecelia Condit's "Possibly in Michigan" at one of UW-Madison's theaters. My favorite motion pictures to watch recreationally are Extreme Animal's "The Urgency" and "Three O'Clock High." I think one of the best examples of "metacinema" is Daniel Sandin's "How TV Works."

Best,
Matt Plain

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.

Tyler Tolman

Hello, I am just entering my sophomore year here at UW-Milwaukee. I have worked on three films total so far one of them being the film "I Am Here" which went to the Cannes Film Festival and won the Student Film Festival. I am currently working on shooting my very first film as I want to become a writer/director in the future. I absolutely love film and my top 3 movies (because you can't just pick one) are: Eraserhead (David Lynch), The Big Lebowski (Coen Brothers), and High Tension (Alexandra Aja). I look forward to watching these films and discussing with everyone.

Week 1- Sherlock Jr./Peeping Tom

I have seen Sherlock Jr before but this is my first time viewing Peeping Tom and I will say that I was extremely satisfied. The substance that the story held was very fascinating to me because people like Mark really do exist in the world and that instills fear beyond words. However let's talk about the technique. I thought the use of metacinema was brilliant as it shows a man's snuff footage through the very lens of a Bell and Howell. Peeping Tom is also utilizing metacinema by using a film set in the majority of the scenes and basically the entire film revolves around Mark using his "Magic Camera" to make a so-called documentary. 

Peeping Tom puts any audience member within the film as we see through the viewing lens and watch the terror that the lead character Mark is so enthralled with. This technique of giving the audience the eyes of a killer especially through his own viewfinder really displays wonderful use of metacinema.

Now when I watched Sherlock Jr the first time around I found it to be very entertaining. I never really thought hard about its use of metacinema (I term in which I was unfamiliar with at the time). I was more so focused on the idea that it was just a comedy piece. However now that I have viewed it a second time and have been introduced to the term metacinema I understood this film in a whole new way.

Week One - Lynda Mouledoux

After watching Sherlock Jr. and Peeping Tom I feel as though I am developing a better understanding on metacinema. Both films broke the forth wall. I had seen Sherlock Jr before but this was my first time watching Peeping Tom. Anyways, Sherlock Jr. broke the fourth wall once he fell asleep at the projector. We then witness a ghost like version of Keaton escape his body. This is Keaton dreaming. The ghost-like version of him enters the screen. At this point we are an audience viewing an audience watching a film within a film. The theater eventually fades away as we enter the film entirely. So at first we are completely aware, and then we become less aware as we are immersed into the “knew” film.  It is not until later when Keaton wakes up that we are reminded again that we are watching a film about a film. So, metacinema has been around for quite some time, considering this was made in the 20s. Which is impressive, but so is Keaton.

Peeping Tom, far less comical and far more serious that Sherlock Jr. also is a film about films. Peeping Tom is about filmmaking. Mark has an obsession with his camera and fear. He has a spike on his tripod that he uses to slice victims throats while they are forced to watch. During this time he films the whole thing. He also works on a movie set, which was another reminder that we are watching a film about filming. It’s not entirely about filming, but the camera is almost a character itself. There is so much focus on the camera. It hardly ever escapes Mark’s grip. It is almost his accomplice during the murders. It is such an obsession. Maybe it stems back from his father always recording him, trying to capture fear and document it as he grows up. Which was also pretty creepy. I felt the most unsettled when Helen entered Mark’s apartment the first time, on her twenty-first birthday. She asked Mark if he would show her one of his films, as a birthday present. Mark eventually agrees. I was sure that something bad was about to happen. Helen was wearing a red dress, which paired nicely with the red lights from the dark room, I think the red dress was almost a statement itself- she was blending in with the room that Mark is pretty much consumed with. He shows her films of his childhood, films that his father recorded. He was trying to strike fear from her. He almost starts recording her too, but he doesn’t. For some reason, Helen is special to him. I was extremely relieved when he let he go. I feared she wasn’t going to make it. There were similar feelings of fear when Mark found Helen’s mother in the room. Mark eventually takes his own life, with the spike on the tripod that he had previously used to murder all of hi other victims, and films it. This is the final film in the movie. During this whole time we are reminded, whether it be from the projection or the camera, that filmmaking and film viewing are taking place—and we are watching it all.

Week 1 Response - CS

In Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, Mark Lewis is obsessed with voyeurism and capturing true fear on film for the "documentary" he is making. He works as a focus puller on a movie lot and a pornographic photographer so he is familiar with a film industry. 

In the first scene we watch him solicit and kill a prostitute. The entire sequence is shown through the lens of his 16mm film camera. This just doesn't make us an accomplice in the murder; it makes us a participant! (Whether we are willing or not, the film could care less.) During this scene we are certain that these events are occurring in the present because the shot though the viewfinder is in color and there is sound. Later we see Mark play the film back in black and white, without sound, knowing that he is reliving the kill in the past which was recorded on film. The cross-hairs of the viewfinder are like the cross-hairs of a rifle's scope. We find out later that is it indeed the camera that is being used as a murder weapon. Mark's camera has an interesting duel-purpose: it is used to end lives but at the same time it is use to preserve life on film. The document record that he creates keeps the victims alive, in a sense, after they have been snuffed. 

The above two stills are from the first and last shots of the film, respectively. That eye belongs to our protagonist Mark. It signifies that this film is going to be about 'watching', specifically through Mark's eyes. But in a more general sense, it is about watching films. Mark creates films to observe people and capture their worse fears. Similarly we continue to watch this films (and all other films) because we have a fascination to observe others' most intimate moments and learn how they function to compare and contrast it to our own lives.
As for that second image, it represents the film and Mark's life coming to an end. The projector has run out of footage, so it is not just the end of the life of Mark but it is also the end of all the characters lives in the film. Outside that film world those character do not exist. Sure they can be replayed but they will always be repeating the same actions. This is true for all film characters fiction or documentary.

Sherlock Jr. by Buster Keaton is an earlier example of metacinema. Keaton plays a film character who can become a character in the films within the film (albeit though dreaming). He directly interacts with the cuts in the film, calling attention to that aspect of filmmaking. A cut to him is interpreted as an instant set change, which is played up for comical effect. Through his comedy he still provokes thoughts about how the simple cut functions and how they guide our viewership of the film. These thoughts elevate our thinking to how film is constructed, turning our thoughts 'meta.'

Week 2 Films

in addition to our viewings please read the first 2 chapters in Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle and Laura Mulvey's article "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Both readings are posted on D2L.

The Eternal Frame - Ant Farm & T.R. Uthco - 1976




Man Bites Dog -  Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel & Benoît Poelvoorde - 1995
(watch on Hulu) 
WARNING: depictions of graphic violence and rape

Black Mirror, Season 2 Ep. 2, "White Bear" - Carl Tibbets - 2013 
(watch on Netflix)

 

Critical Reflections: Reflexivity & Social Critique

This week we'll be looking a selection of work which calls our attention towards the medium of cinema, television and other ocular technologies whilst asking us to critically evaluate the power structures that are embedded within these mediums. Cinema, television, and now our more hyperactive forms of social media (cellphones, Facebook, YouTube) all constitute technologies of representation through which the reality of our daily lives are mediated. "To mediate" can be understood quite simply as (from OED): To act as a mediator or intermediary with (a person), for the purpose of bringing about agreement or reconciliation; to be the medium for, or means of bringing about (a force, reaction, etc.); or to lie or occupy the space between two things, times, etc. If we think of the mediator as a figure in a discussion, this person is on some level meant to help translate two perspectives. A mediator helps guide a conversation. I'm want to reinforce that visual media as a force for mediating our experience acts as something that occupies the space between reality and ourselves. 

Take, for example, the Arab Spring. I assume that none of us experienced the Arab Spring directly, though it has direct impact on the new organization of global politics, creates shifts in global economy (both of which directly impact us), and may even have direct impact on our own personal political ideals. However, we experience this cultural reality through media, thus our experience is mediated. Mediation need not be understood as historically specific as my example of the Arab Spring, but I use this as the most literal evidence of media's being-between us and a particular reality. We are constantly engaging with social visual media that is a reality of its own (a very real media object occupying coded space) and yet is also a separation from reality. Media is one step removed from "reality itself" (and I put that in quotes because I am very hesitant & suspicious of using language like that...I might say instead, "physical reality" or some other such thing). 

Reality is turned into spectacle; transformed, translated, mediated. A spectacle is a specially prepared or arranged display of a more or less public nature (esp. one on a large scale), forming an impressive or interesting show or entertainment for those viewing it (from OED). We might say that there are "minor" and "major" spectacles. A minor spectacle might be short videos posted on the web, which might take an intense multiplicity of potential shapes and run the gamut from hilarious to horrifying, highly staged to journalistic. Major spectacles are what we might call television series, films, and news broadcasts. These objects are more highly produced, are designed for a particular large-scale audience, and are themselves of a larger duration and scale. The latter would be what is typically referred to as "mass media." The former, "viral media." It's important to keep in mind that the vocabulary of scale here implies nothing about the relative power of these forms of media. As we know viral media exerts as much, if not much more, social force in the contemporary world. The word viral encapsulates this perfectly, because a virus is incredibly small and contains the power to wipe out its biological or technological host. 

 

The spectacle mediates reality. It is reality turned into a commodity designed to circulate within a social network. This circulation may serve the intention of generating revenue, disseminating information, or perhaps more "purposeless" desires. I want to encourage us to keep in mind that there is always the force of a desire encoded in the spectacle. The spectacle reveals a reality hiding behind the veneer of the image. I will venture to say that every spectacle represents a complex set of desires and fantasies that motivate the impulse to capture the image, to create the spectacle. These forces may be the forces of memory (personal or cultural), forces of power (political, sexual, or ideological), or forces of fantasy and desire. The work we'll be engaging with this week sets out to engage with ideas of the mediation and uncover some of the more violent notions hiding behind the surface of the spectacle.

Cara Dombkowski

Hello my names Cara Dombkowski and I am a senior graduating in the fall not in film, but in  Community Art! Last week I was the lead facilitator for a girls art club and it was pretty awesome. I like to carve watermelons, pumpkins, and sometimes apples. I have made some stop-motions/clips in digital studio practices but I have never studied film, this is all very new to me.

Last semester my class collaborated on a project and I ended up compiling and editing the content. This interviewee chose a picture of an apple to commence his interview. 

This clips just too funny and cute not to share..

Introduction

Hey everyone!

My name is Lynda. I will be a senior film student starting this fall. I am pretty excited for this course. I've always enjoyed metacinema but never really knew that there was an actual word for it. So that's pretty cool. I love shows like The Office and Parks and Rec. It's nice when the fourth wall is broken. I will be starting my senior project soon. Hopefully this course will give me some inspiration! Regardless, I'm excited to learn!

Thanks!

- Lynda Mouledoux

DB -- WEEK ONE

As an introduction to metacinema, Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. does a good job of laying a lot of the ideas and themes present in metacinema, although it takes until about seventeen minutes through the film for these ideas to reveal themselves.

The majority of Sherlock Jr. takes place within a movie within a dream, as Keaton’s projectionist protagonist falls asleep at the wheel, leaving his body and walking directly into his dream-screen. Keaton then pulls a gauntlet of visual gags that is thrilling with a sense of “How did he do that?” He plays with time and space directly in his first bit, the scene around him changing from a boulder in the ocean to a snowy forest to a lion’s cage. All of these scene changes take place on a screen within the screen, with an orchestra in front. We are directly being reminded that Keaton is in a movie, watching through a proscenium on the silver screen of Keaton’s dreams.

We then enter the screen with Keaton. In his dream world, he is an excellent detective and unable to be outsmarted. Keaton plays with some dramatic irony in the next bit, having a man and his henchman set up traps for Keaton, only for them to almost fall into the traps themselves. Dramatic irony in metacinema in a interesting idea, as we the audience know things the characters don’t, leading to the stakes being heightened without their knowledge. Here, Sherlock Jr. plays with that idea, especially within the motorcycle chase scene, where Keaton rides on the handlebars of a motorcycle through a series of escalating near-impossible stunts without knowing the driver has been absent for quite a while. Keaton makes his movie within a movie an exaggerated, exciting, dramatic piece. A direct contrast to his day to day life of living as a poor projectionist. Movies are a place to live out fantasies Keaton thinks, and so he does.

Peeping Tom also lives out some fantasies, although the opposite of Keaton’s dream action movie. The fantasies in Peeping Tom are more psychological and horrific. The ideas in this film were a bit more difficult to parse than Sherlock Jr. however. The main plot is pretty straightforward, a guy has an obsession with murdering women and filming their faces as they die, trying to get the perfect on-screen death. This seems to draw a direct parallel to horror films in general, trying to draw extreme emotion from deaths.

Dramatic irony was used in this film to great effect as well. When Mark meets with Vivian, after a shoot on the set, they both “prepare” for their roles. Vivian does a great dance routine while Mark moves everything for his shoot into place. Vivian’s happy demeanor and flamboyant dancing directly contrast Mark’s methodical planning for her death.

Visually, the biggest tie to metacinema is the film looking through Mark’s viewfinder. The movie opens with the first person view following a prostitute to her death. We are told immediately that we are looking through a viewfinder by the black cross that divides the screen into boxes, and the handheld nature of the camera movement. We return to this view multiple times throughout the movie, giving the viewer a viscerally disturbing insight into Mark’s murders.

Cody Schmitt Intro

Hello,

I'm Cody Schmitt a senior film student and next semester will be my last. I am interested in metacinema because it is self-referential. It's aware what it is and how it functions so it isn't afraid to call attention to itself or the filmmaking process.

When I think about metacinema the first thing I think of is Community. One character, Abed, is obsessed with movies and television and he makes references to their lives on the show as being similar to TV. All the other characters act like Abed is out of the loop or just crazy, but as someone watching the show, we can see that Abed's observations are spot-on to what we are watching. This causes us to think about things beyond the confines of the show and ponder on the concept and tropes of television.

For Example:

Here's a video I made in two hours one night. I think it's a bit meta because the character directly addresses the audience.  Mortgage Calculator

Week 1 Response

Sherlock Jr and Peeping Tom were both films that I had seen before but I had never gone into it specifically looking for the context of being meta or breaking the fourth wall. Now that I have, it is pretty clear that that kind of breaking of immersion is part of what makes these movies stand out. Although you might enjoy watching these two movies, and you should, it might take some extra reflection after the movie to figure out why. When a movie exposes itself as a movie, you can look at it more honestly. You tend to put more thought into the thematic choices because you are constantly reminded that someone put this work of fiction together just for you to understand it.

Let's start with Peeping Tom, so that we can end on a funny note. Peeping Tom fits all the basic requirements for meta cinema. The film is about a film. Large parts of the plot take place on a film set and the entire movie features a man filming more morbid movies of his own as we watch him do it. But beyond that, Peeping Tom does something really cool with it's metacinema. By showing us the point of view shots of his viewfinder, it turns us into more than just an audience member, it makes us part of the film crew. The way they present it to us, it is like we are the ones filming these snuff films ourself.

"I'm sorry! Michael Powell is making me do this!"

Beyond the plot being centered around making two different films (the big one, and his snuff films), the real clever use of meta cinema is reminding us of the camera in this super intimate way. If you consider the culture at the time of this movie's release, then the meta goes even deeper. Powell was shamed by his colleagues for making a "dirty" and "crude" movie, due to it's sexual undertones. Those at the time watching the movie in theaters probably shifted uncomfortably in their seats, thinking that they were being forced to sit through a snuff film in real life.

Now, as promised, back to the funny stuff. Although it's humor may have been lost on audiences at the time, Sherlock Jr. seems like a film that would hold up very well in today's comedy. Like Peeping Tom, Sherlock Jr. constantly reminds us that we are watching a movie, ignoring minor details like reality to do it. And also like Peeping Tom, the movie's plot centers around filmmaking itself. In the film's penultimate scene, our protagonist, the projectionist finds himself trapped within the film he's showing. Like my favorite comic character, Deadpool, he realizes right away that he is trapped within the medium. He finds himself victim to shenanigans that characters in a real movie wouldn't find themselves in: 

Like fully experiencing a smash cut...



Makes perfect sense. Metacinema is a powerful force. It can't be held back by puny physics and logic.