Fannish 5: Five Favourite Meta-by-Canons
Jan. 21st, 2012 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenak5 greatest (or favorite) examples of breaking the fourth wall, or canon material going meta.
Sometimes it's very borderline, somewhere between meta-ness and fourth wall breaking, which are really not the same thing. (Incidentally, for Brecht readers: does fourth wall in breaking in tv shows count as episches Theater?) I find most overt fourth wall breaking self satisfied, and intelligent meta in an ongoing canon is tricky to pull off without coming across as too masturbatory, too. However, here are five examples that please this particular viewer and reader very much indeed.
1.) Babylon 5: Sleeping in Light, the final episode, very near the end includes a tiny cameo by the show's creator and writer, J.M. Straczynski. he's the guy switching off the lights at the station before it gets destroyed. Now all the gods in the Centauri pantheon now that JMS could, in some of his writing, be infuriating or smug when trying for meta (A View from the Gallery comes to mind, but it's by no means the only example), but that tiny scene was and remains to me earned, incredibly touching and very apropos.
2.) Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Storyteller. I could have choosen Superstar as easily; both are episodes written Jane Espenson which tackle the show itself and certain well-loved fanfic clichés (not just of BTVS fandom, of all fandoms) with gusto and wit. Indeed it's very enlightening to watch both as a double feature.andraste wrote a fabulous essay about them which if you haven't already I all urge you to read right now. To quote from it: If Jonathan behaves like Mary Sue - the fan within the story - then Andrew behaves like the fan outside the story, analysing the relationships and histories of the group just as we do. (Note the reversal of the external/internal there.) He treats the gang as if they're a shiny new fandom whose canon he's plunging into, even memorising their dialogue and postulating slashy UST. (All the better to write fanfiction ...) The reason why I picked Storyteller in the end for this meme is that it actually is both meta and fourth wall breaking: at one point Andrew addresses us, the audience directly, and it's one of the few examples which totally works for me.
3.) The X-Files: Jose Chung's From Outer Space, written by Darin Morgan, and one of my all time favourite episodes of the entire show. It's a standalone story (sort of), told by various unreliable narrators, and within the episode, you also have a novelist (the Jose Chung of the title) writing a book about the whole event. This was a third season episode, so by that point there were a lot of X-Files tropes it could parody with relish, BUT, and that's crucial, it did so without ruining the premise. And the comments from Chung's book on Mulder and Scully as people will never not be funny. :)
4.) Galaxy Quest. Which manages at the same time to be a spoof directed mainly, but not exclusively, at Star Trek and an affectionate love declaration; and both poked fun and celebrated fandom. I was torn as to whether or not to include because, as opposed to the other examples, it wasn't meta created by the original writers/producers, but it is such an from-the-inside thing that I declare it unavoidable on such a list. Hard to single out one particular meta moment, but it's got to be either Gwen complaining about the writer of the episode, Guy worrying about being a red shirt, or Alexander observing Jason managed to get his shirt off.
5.) Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. I was in varying degrees entertained and intrigued by the other Rushdie novels I read, but this one is the only of his which I really, really love. At the time he wrote it, the idea of a storyteller silenced had an obvious personal resonance, and Kattam Shud works as a Khomeini avatar, but this children's book works splendidly if you have not the slightest idea about its author's biography. It has a fairy tale/fantasy quest structure while at the same time going meta on these stories, and stories in general, every bit of the way; the characters are both themselves and archetypes; and Rushdie puns like a madman and alludes to everything from Bollywood films to the Kathāsaritsāgara,from Lewis Caroll to the Beatles. ("They are the Eggheads. He is the Walrus.")
Sometimes it's very borderline, somewhere between meta-ness and fourth wall breaking, which are really not the same thing. (Incidentally, for Brecht readers: does fourth wall in breaking in tv shows count as episches Theater?) I find most overt fourth wall breaking self satisfied, and intelligent meta in an ongoing canon is tricky to pull off without coming across as too masturbatory, too. However, here are five examples that please this particular viewer and reader very much indeed.
1.) Babylon 5: Sleeping in Light, the final episode, very near the end includes a tiny cameo by the show's creator and writer, J.M. Straczynski. he's the guy switching off the lights at the station before it gets destroyed. Now all the gods in the Centauri pantheon now that JMS could, in some of his writing, be infuriating or smug when trying for meta (A View from the Gallery comes to mind, but it's by no means the only example), but that tiny scene was and remains to me earned, incredibly touching and very apropos.
2.) Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Storyteller. I could have choosen Superstar as easily; both are episodes written Jane Espenson which tackle the show itself and certain well-loved fanfic clichés (not just of BTVS fandom, of all fandoms) with gusto and wit. Indeed it's very enlightening to watch both as a double feature.
andraste wrote a fabulous essay about them which if you haven't already I all urge you to read right now. To quote from it: If Jonathan behaves like Mary Sue - the fan within the story - then Andrew behaves like the fan outside the story, analysing the relationships and histories of the group just as we do. (Note the reversal of the external/internal there.) He treats the gang as if they're a shiny new fandom whose canon he's plunging into, even memorising their dialogue and postulating slashy UST. (All the better to write fanfiction ...) The reason why I picked Storyteller in the end for this meme is that it actually is both meta and fourth wall breaking: at one point Andrew addresses us, the audience directly, and it's one of the few examples which totally works for me. 3.) The X-Files: Jose Chung's From Outer Space, written by Darin Morgan, and one of my all time favourite episodes of the entire show. It's a standalone story (sort of), told by various unreliable narrators, and within the episode, you also have a novelist (the Jose Chung of the title) writing a book about the whole event. This was a third season episode, so by that point there were a lot of X-Files tropes it could parody with relish, BUT, and that's crucial, it did so without ruining the premise. And the comments from Chung's book on Mulder and Scully as people will never not be funny. :)
4.) Galaxy Quest. Which manages at the same time to be a spoof directed mainly, but not exclusively, at Star Trek and an affectionate love declaration; and both poked fun and celebrated fandom. I was torn as to whether or not to include because, as opposed to the other examples, it wasn't meta created by the original writers/producers, but it is such an from-the-inside thing that I declare it unavoidable on such a list. Hard to single out one particular meta moment, but it's got to be either Gwen complaining about the writer of the episode, Guy worrying about being a red shirt, or Alexander observing Jason managed to get his shirt off.
5.) Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. I was in varying degrees entertained and intrigued by the other Rushdie novels I read, but this one is the only of his which I really, really love. At the time he wrote it, the idea of a storyteller silenced had an obvious personal resonance, and Kattam Shud works as a Khomeini avatar, but this children's book works splendidly if you have not the slightest idea about its author's biography. It has a fairy tale/fantasy quest structure while at the same time going meta on these stories, and stories in general, every bit of the way; the characters are both themselves and archetypes; and Rushdie puns like a madman and alludes to everything from Bollywood films to the Kathāsaritsāgara,from Lewis Caroll to the Beatles. ("They are the Eggheads. He is the Walrus.")
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