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Pity
the poor cultural critic. Walled off from the
world, viewing events and trends from the safety
of an office desk, he or she longs to somehow
affect or influence that untouchable outside world.
Like a literary critic who dreams of one day being
footnoted, the cultural critic dreams of coining
a term or phrase for which absolutely no one will
ever remember them.
In
the New York Times Sunday Magazine recently, cultural
critic Laura Miller tried to introduce the word
"meta" into the scumble of postmillenium
culture. If the fin de siecle was all about postmodern
irony (ironically immortalized in Alanis Morrisette's
song "Isn't it Ironic," which contains
a dozen or so examples of irony, none of which
are ironic, and in incredibly bad writing, such
as David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and Dave
Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Stupidity--sorry,
Genius) then our new decade is all about meta:
a kind of self-knowing, self-reflexivity (like
the actor who winks at the camera to let us know
that he knows he's only acting).
Miller
traces the roots of meta to a galaxy far, far
away called the 1960's, the creation of incredibly
bad novelists like Robert Coover, John Barth and
Gilbert Sorrentino, who everyone always mentions
as being metafiction writers--that is, everyone
who has never read Robert Coover, John Barth or
Gilbert Sorrentino (NB: no one to my knowledge
reads Robert Coover, John Barth or Gilbert Sorrentino,
who are far more well-known as teachers of writing
than for actually writing). In Miller's world,
the ne plus ultra of meta is "Seinfeld,"
a show famous for being about "nothing."
Actually, "Seinfeld" was about something:
it was observational comedy. The real subject
of "Seinfeld" was the misadventures
of a group of characters that never change. Ironic,
isn't it?
So
we have Miller urging us to go forth into the
world and utter "meta" anytime something
strikes us as being aware of its own artificiality.
As an example she gives us that seminal work of
postmillenium culture, "Goldmember."
Mike Myers, she tells us, is the king of meta
because he lets the audience know he's consciously
making fun of the conventions of the James Bond
films. Excuse me, but the James Bond films made
fun of the conventions of the James Bond films
before Mike Myers was even born. In "On His
Majesty's Secret Service," Sean Connery replacement
George Lazenby skis down a hill through a bevy
of bad guys, then turns to the camera and says
"this never happened to the other guy."
How meta!
I
hate to break it to Ms. Miller, but meta has been
around a lot longer than the 60's. Ever heard
of the chorus in a Greek tragedy, commenting on
the actions of the other characters? Or the Shakespearean
aside (most of Iago's lines in "Othello"
are meta-comments to the audience)? Or Tristram
Shandy, that 18th century work of metafiction
which predates Coover, Barth and Sorrentino by
over 200 years? Or Jonathan Swift's "Tale
of a Tub"? Or how about the concept of labeling
a work of fiction as a work of fiction? Isn't
it meta to write "novel" on a novel?
So
the next time you notice yourself or someone else
engaged in a self-knowing act of self-reflexivity,
utter the word "Miller." Let's give
credit where credit is due. Perhaps a touch of
fame will satisfy at least one cultural critic
into silence. A world of commenters commenting
on the comments of other commenters is so...meta!
Ooops, sorry. Miller.
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