January 8, 2007
Section I: Conceptual Construction, Theory
And now the theory...
Metafiction and the Metapictures
The project theorises metacomics in terms of two models of meta-level representation, one textual and the other pictorial. Patricia Waugh's Metafiction and W.J.T. Mitchell's Picture Theory rehearse parallel definitions of metafiction and metapictures, respectively. Both of their models also contain sub-types that roughly parallel each other. They both define the "meta" as a paradox in which the art (text or image) collapses the difference between the representation and that which it represents, and thus, in many cases but not all, demonstrates that the systems of perception that the audience employs to understand the art are the very same systems that it uses to understand reality. It must be stressed that though this is the abstract definition of meta-level representation, not every text performs precisely this move. Many gesture toward it but never quite force the collapse. Many assume the collapse has already taken place, and therefore do not bother undertaking it.
Waugh describes metafiction as “the construction of a fictional illusion (as in traditional realism) and the laying bare of that illusion” (6), which is often achieved by granting the characters, the narrator(s), and/or the reader “the same ontological status” (33); thus reality and fiction collapse into each other, and the separation between them, rarely acknowledged but almost universally assumed, disappears. In this collapse is the opportunity, not always taken, to demonstrate that the tools we use to understand fiction are precisely the same tools that we use to understand reality. Waugh describes "two poles of metafiction: one that finally accepts a substantial real world whose significance is not entirely composed of relationships within language; and one that suggests there can never be an escape from the prisonhouse of language and either delights or despairs in this" (53). The first she calls structural, and the second she places "at the level of the sign," therefore, I will call it semiotic. Structural metafiction involves "the undermining of convention [...] using a specific previous text or system for its base" (53). Roughly speaking, structural metafiction happens at the level of narrative (plot, character, genre, etc.). Transmetropolitan, with a plot revolving around the media constructions of an American presidential election, and Moore and O'Neil's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which constructs a dysfunctional superhero team out of Victorian horror and adventure characters, are structural metafictions in Waugh's terms. Semiotic metafictions are about signs, the mechanics of representation, and language itself. Promethea, Gaiman et al.'s Sandman, and Ellis and John Cassaday's Planetary all spend significant amounts of time in fantastic settings that represent imagination, representation, and language—The Immateria in Promethea, The Dreaming in Sandman, and The Snowflake in Planetary—and thus are continuously preoccupied with signification. In Waugh's terms, we can gauge metacomics on two closely-related axes. The first is the degree to which they allow self-reference to become active commentary, at the extreme end of which fiction collapses into reality, and the second is the degree to which they employ either structural or semiotic metafictional techniques.
Mitchell’s construction of the metapicture is almost exactly the same as Waugh's construction of metafiction; it indicates or acknowledges itself as a picture, "rather than effacing itself in the service of transparent representation of something else" (48). One of the most famous examples of this kind of metapicture is René Magritte's "The Treason of Images," for example, which insists by negation that it is a drawing and not a transparent window into real life. "Ceci n'est pas une pipe," as it were.
All of Mitchell's examples are similarly blatant. They are pictures that depict or allude to the act of drawing. They "function as reflections on the basic nature of pictures [… They] show themselves in order to know themselves: they stage the 'self-knowledge' of pictures" (48). Metafiction and metapictures both put an examination of their own formal structures on display. Pictures actually resemble that which they represent, unlike text[1]; therefore, displaying themselves as constructions is ironically easier than in metafiction. Pictures can literally show the viewer that they are two-dimensional tricks of the eye that merely resemble three-dimensional reality, as in M.C. Escher's illustrations for example. Also, the impact on the viewer is potentially much greater than in text because the very same intuitive viewing process that makes viewers think of pictures as "transparent representations of something else" are the ones that metapictures employ to force them to realise otherwise. This kind of metapicture is the visual parallel to Waugh's structural metafiction. Though they both have potentially far-reaching implications, they both happen at the most literal level of representation, which in fiction is narrative details, like plot and character, and in pictures is the actual figures that the pictures resemble.
Mitchell's sub-type, which roughly but not perfectly parallels Waugh's semiotic metafiction, is the dialectical or multistable image, which appears to be one of two different images depending on how the viewer looks at it; he or she literally decides which way to look at the image at any given moment. The most commonly-known example of a multistable image is "The Devil's Fork," which appears to be either two- or three-pronged, and is in fact both at once, even though it logically cannot be both at once.
Though they "are not metapictures in [a] formally explicit way," meaning that they do not depict the act of drawing, they do achieve the metapictorial effect by displaying "the phenomenon of 'nesting,' presenting one image concealed inside another image, [… and thus] they tend to make the boundary between first- and second-order representation ambiguous” (49). Multistable images, like Mitchell's "formally explicit" metapictures, force viewers to acknowledge that pictures are not direct reflections of reality but two-dimensional figures that create the false appearance of three-dimensional reality.
The multistable image parallels Waugh's notion of the the semiotic metafiction, which collapses reality and fiction at the level of sign. The text cannot be just reality, nor can it be just fiction; it formally implicates both reality and fiction in its narrative. The picture cannot be just one shape or just another; the fork is clearly both two- and three-pronged. And yet neither the fiction nor the picture are allowed to be both, within the confines of Enlightenment logic. At their most extreme, metafiction and metapictures do not just reveal problems in our mechanisms of reading and viewing, but in our basic notion of the rational. They can potentially reveal that logic is, itself, yet another system of perception and representation, like fiction and pictures. The inverse principle, here, is that our basic enjoyment of metafiction and metapictures comes from being presented with a perfectly coherent representation that, nevertheless, does not follow the rules of logic. Like jokes, meta-level representations count on the human tendency to react with laughter and amusement to that which is irrational, provided that it is sufficiently witty. Thus, instead of the willing suspension of disbelief, on which both fiction and pictures rely, metafiction and metapictures rely on the unwilling suspension of belief. They all but require the audience to counter-act it habitual suspension of disbelief in favour of embracing that disbelief and acknowledging that the art is a construct, an awareness that can and often does lead to the conclusion that reality is constructed out of perceptions.
[1] That is to say, unlike phonetic, alphabetical, Western text. Asian characters are largely pictographic, and therefore the stark divide between image and text does not exist in those cultures.
Posted by orion at January 8, 2007 5:30 PM