Metalepsis as a meta-referential device in professional artistic communication [articol]

Abstract

Our contribution focuses on the trans-medial concept of meta-reference. One of the main meta-referential devices is metalepsis which has been transferred from narratology to different other arts becoming a modern way of addressing the diegetic audience. We comment upon ascending, descending, horizontal metalepsis, and their effects in cinematographic art (e.g. Bergman’s, Allen’s, Haneke’s movies). Based on broken aesthetic illusions and diegetic frames, these movies offer wide possibilities to analyze self-reflexive cinematographic devices. If there is a greater level of symbolic, diegetical and dramatic motivation, the device loses its anti-illusionist effect on the audience. The directors found ways to demonstrate that their rebel characters are of a sort of victims of the movies being no longer able to see the difference between reality and fiction, and believing that the world itself responds to a remote control or that everything is rewindable.