What is Metacinema?

 
Welcome to Metacinema (Film 203/380). I've decided to host our course discussions on blogger (antiquated though it may feel these days) for a number of reasons. First of all, regardless of how prevalent Blogger is now, its way better than D2L. I'm hoping that it at least makes the presentation of materials a bit more visually appealing. Secondly, this is where you will all post your weekly responses. I expect this platform to be much more aesthetically pleasing to content with than D2L and hope that it will encourage you to invest a bit more energy into your posts.

Let this initial post serve as an example: You are expected to incorporate images in each post and I expect you to treat your posts with care.

So, to initiate a definition of "metacinema," I will begin by sharing this poem:

***
Paradoxes and Oxymorons

This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you. You look out a window
Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don’t have it.
You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.

The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot.
What’s a plain level? It is that and other things,
Bringing a system of them into play. Play?
Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be

A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,
As in the division of grace these long August days
Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know
It gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters.

It has been played once more. I think you exist only
To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren’t there
Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem
Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.



by John Ashbery
***
The major characteristic of this poem is that it is a self-aware object. It is a poem that knows that it is a poem and whose major trick or strategy is to call attention to its status and function as a poem. The most basic definition of metacinema is a form or genre of cinema that calls attention to itself as cinema. In other words, films about film or filmmaking. More specifically we can understand any gesture within a particular film that calls our attention to the fact that we are watching a film as metacinematic.

The term metacinema finds its precedent in the literary concept of "metafiction." From Wikipedia:

Metafiction is a literary device used to self-consciously and systematically draw attention to a work's status as an artifact. It poses questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection. It can be compared to presentational theater, which does not let the audience forget it is viewing a play; metafiction forces readers to be aware that they are reading a fictional work.

Typical metafictional strategies include:

• A story about a writer who creates a story
• A story that features itself (as a narrative or as a physical object) as its own prop or MacGuffin
• A story containing another work of fiction within itself
• A story addressing the specific conventions of story, such as title, character conventions, paragraphing or plots
• A novel where the narrator intentionally exposes him or herself as the author of the story
• A book in which the book itself seeks interaction with the reader
• A story in which the readers of the story itself force the author to change the story
• Narrative footnotes, which continue the story while commenting on it
• A story in which the characters are aware that they are in a story
• A story in which the characters make reference to the author or his previous work
• These elements of metafiction are similar to devices used in metacinematic techniques.

For a quintessential example of metafiction please read the first chapter of Italo Calvino's novel, If on a winter's night a traveler...
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5szEeI7e_MDc2l0eVBIS20zZnc&authuser=0 

Metacinema can be most simply understood as a set of strategies that are self-referential and/or reflexive.

To begin this course I wanted to share a few examples of this type of reflexive gestures from popular cinema. What is offered below are examples of the more generic reflexive devices. Metacinema may in face begin with something like a film about a film being made, or a gag in which the camera is acknowledged (and these types of examples truly abound), but this is not where the idea of metacinema ends. There are many more complex ways in which cinema reflects on itself, on the immanent conditions of the cinematic, the visual, the image, illusion and artifice. As we progress through the semester we will reflect on the psychological and social implications of cinema reflexivity.

First, we have Dziga Vertov's, Man With a Movie Camera (Soviet Union, 1929). As its title implies, the camera man is one of the central figure of the film. According to Vertov, this film is an "Excerpt from a camera operators diary...an experiment in cinematic communication of real events." Man With a Movie Camera is a revolution in the technique of montage editing, and one of the major "city symphony" films. The film introduced a new approach to documentary filmmaking, and a new set of strategies for creating metaphorical associations between disparate images. One of the most radical aspects of this film is how central the camera (and cameraman) is to the film and the ways in which the cinematic artifice is revealed and deconstructed, as evinced in the following excerpt:



Reflexivity & self-referential devices are nothing new to cinema. And we can point to examples of these devices throughout the history of cinema. A very famous example would be Singin' In the Rain (Kelly & Donen, 1952). Not only does Singin' in the Rain take place entirely in the world of the Hollywood film sets and studio culture, but it mythologizes the transition from silent films to the "talkies." One of the great metacinematic devices are the multiple references the film makes to The Jazz Singer (Crosland, 1927), the first film with synchronous sound produced in Hollywood.



One of the many pleasures of Singin' in the Rain are the set-pieces for the film and complex tableaux of Hollywood sound stages, which unfold behind the action of many scenes. The clip belows shows an example of this. I've included the full song because I think "Make 'em Laugh" might be the best dance routine in any film. Ever.



Many examples of reflexivity populate the films of Mel Brooks. The metacinematic devices in Brooks' films tend to break the fourth wall, or acknowledge the camera and audience in a way that traditionally cinema is not supposed to do. Breaking the fourth wall collapses the cinematic illusion and makes you aware that you are watching a film. These devices are designed as visual jokes, but I think it is interesting that they exist in so many of the films he's made. Here are just a few examples from his film High Anxiety (1977):

 

And lastly I thought I'd share two scenes from Wes Craven's New Nightmare (Wes Craven, 1994), which is the 7th film in the franchise. In New Nightmare the actress who plays Nancy in the original Nightmare on Elm Street plays herself. She begins to be haunted by Freddy again, who in the world of the film is supposed to be a fictional character. Freddy escapes from the Freddy films (in the film) and becomes a real, murdering Freddy (in the film). The film departs from the original continuity of the series, and is basically as "meta-" as it gets, including an appearance by the director Wes Craven himself who is supposedly dreaming up the story as the films goes along, writing his dreams into a new "Freddy" film, which is the story of the film we are watching...which is basically a film within a film...
New Nightmare even features multiple scenes where we see the dialogue spoken by the characters written on a computer screen or page of a script. And so we are left wondering, which came first? The fantasy or the reality?





(Wes Craven's New Nightmare is available in full on Netflix!)

So these are just a few examples of metacinematic devices. Other popular examples can be seen in television shows such as The Office or Parks & Recreation in which characters often break the 4th wall and look directly into the camera lens, acknowledging that there is a camera person and audience observing the scene. The function of that is to mimic the feel of a documentary, to lend a sense of realism to the humor in the show. Or you might take The Cabin in the Woods, as a perfect example of metacinema. The entire premise of Cabin is that the whole event is staged as a live television spectacle and so every cliche that is used is done so with a hyper-reflexivity & self-awareness.

Hopefully this should serve as a useful introduction to the more simple & generic devices that constitute metacinema. In summation I want to offer a few useful definitions:


Meta -, prefix:
1. Denoting change, transformation, permutation, or substitution.
 2. With sense ‘beyond, above, at a higher level’.

(a) Prefixed to the name of a subject or discipline to denote another which deals with ulterior issues in the same field, or which raises questions about the nature of the original discipline and its methods, procedures, and assumptions.Cf. earlier metamathematical adj., metaphysics n., metapolitical adj., metapolitics n., metatheology n.
(b) Also applied to related adjectives: meta-economic adj. (or for our purposes “meta-cinematic”)

Metafiction: Metafiction is a literary device used to self-consciously and systematically draw attention to a work's status as an artifact. It poses questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection. It can be compared to presentational theatre, which does not let the audience forget it is viewing a play; metafiction forces readers to be aware that they are reading a fictional work.


Referential: That refers or relates to something; that contains or constitutes a reference; relating to or intended for reference. 

Reflexive:
a. Chiefly Philos. and Psychol. Of a mental action, process, etc.: turned or directed back upon the mind itself; involving intelligent self-awareness or self-examination; introspective. Cf.
b.Chiefly Literary Theory. Self-referential, self-reflexive; spec. (of a text, artwork, etc.) that consciously calls attention to itself or its process or production.