Truth and Metafiction

Plasticity and Renewal in American Narrative

Josh Toth

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781501351730
• eBook ISBN: 9781501351747
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism Theory
• Index: Literature

Metafiction has long been associated with the heyday of literary postmodernism-with a certain sense of irresponsibility, political apathy, or outright nihilism. Yet, if (as is now widely assumed) postmodernism has finally run its course, how might we account for the proliferation of metafictional devices in contemporary narrative media? Does this persistence undermine the claim that postmodernism has passed, or has the function of metafiction somehow changed? To answer these questions, Josh Toth considers a broad range of recent metafictional texts-bywriters such as George Saunders and Jennifer Egan and directors such as Sofia Coppola and Quentin Tarantino. At the same time, he traverses a diffuse theoretical landscape: from the rise of various new materialisms (in philosophy) and the turn to affect (in literary criticism) to the seemingly endless efforts to name postmodernism's ostensible successor. Ultimately, Toth argues that much contemporary metafiction moves beyond postmodern skepticism to reassert the possibility of making true claims about real things. Capable of combating a "post-truth" crisis, such forms assert or assume a kind of Hegelian plasticity; they actively and persistently confront the trauma of what is infinitely mutable, or perpetually other. What is outside or before a given representation is confirmed and endured as that which exceeds the instance of its capture. The truth is thereby renewed; neither denied nor simply assumed, it is approached as ethically as possible. Its plasticity is grasped because the grasp, the form of its narrative apprehension, lets slip.

Part I

Theory

1

Metafiction Contra Postmodernity

Cyborg: “That’s real meta”

Beast Boy: “I once met a dog!”

Raven: “No, Beast Boy, ‘meta’ means . . . ugh, never mind”

—Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, Teen Titans Go!

Meta after Meta

The first chapter of Patricia Waugh’s 1984 study of metafiction—Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction—is titled “What is metafiction and why are they saying such awful things about it?” Today, some thirty-five years along, a book on metafiction (not this one, however) might open with a somewhat self-conscious parody: something like “What’s with the persistence of metafiction and why are they saying some okay things about it?”¹ Such a parody might seem forced, yet it would neatly exemplify the difference between a study of metafiction’s omnipresence in the peak years of postmodernism and a study of metafiction’s somewhat inexplicable tenacity since postmodernism ostensibly conceded its position as the cultural dominant in the United States and much of the West. Inexplicable: because metafiction has, since (at least) Waugh, been viewed as the postmodern modus operandi par excellence. Ostensibly: because postmodernism’s demise, along with the cause and subsequent ramifications of that demise, has yet to be determined with any real certainty, any real consensus. I want to focus primarily, in this introductory chapter, on the latter problem. However, it might be useful to set the stage by first addressing, if relatively briefly, the former—which is, of course, the central concern of this book (even if we won’t approach it directly until Chapter 3).

Perhaps most exemplary, in terms of metafiction’s intimate connection to postmodernism, is the work of Waugh, Brian McHale, and Linda Hutcheon.² Beginning in the mid-1980s and extending into the 1990s, these three critics most effectively drew our attention to the fact that “postmodernist fiction” could be, by and large, defined by its pervasive tendency toward self-reflexivity. Moreover, that self-reflexivity (manifesting, variously, as intertextuality, pastiche, or playfully fictionalized historiographies) paralleled, or directly conversed with, a series of developments in continental philosophy—French poststructuralism, most specifically (i.e., the then still radical work of Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, etc.). As Waugh put it in 1984, “Over the last twenty years, novelists have tended to become much more aware of the theoretical issues involved in constructing fictions. In consequence, their novels have tended to embody dimensions of self-reflexivity and formal uncertainty” (2). For such (postmodern) writers, “The simple notion that language passively reflects a coherent, meaningful and ‘objective’ world is no longer tenable” (3). As a result, and somewhat paradoxically, metafiction gets celebrated by Waugh (and then McHale and Hutcheon, in their own specific ways) for its ability to “offer[] extremely accurate models of understanding the contemporary experience of the world as a construction, an artifice, a web of interconnected semiotic systems” (9, my emphasis). This sense of “accuracy” eventually came to buttress the impulse to write self-reflexive fiction. By the time Waugh published her seminal work on such fiction, and the “paranoia that permeate[d] the metafictional writings of the sixties and the seventies . . . [had given] way to celebration, to the discovery of new forms of the fantastic” (9), the list of writers one might associate with postmodern metafiction was long indeed. Yet the work of certain usual suspects tended (or tends, still) to be offered as paradigmatic. In America, a list of “arche-metafictionists” will almost invariably include John Barth, Kurt Vonnegut, William Gass, Kathy Acker, Philip K. Dick, Ishmael Reed, Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, Woody Allen, Vladimir Nabokov, E. L. Doctorow, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Maxine Hong Kingston, and so on. As, however, Waugh’s whimsical chapter title suggests, the work of such writers was often met (even during its heyday) with some hostility. It was viewed, she notes, as untenably paranoid. Sublimely bottomless conspiracies (as in the work of Pynchon or DeLillo) and the inescapability of fatalistic “scripts” (as in the work of Barth or Vonnegut) are, after all, hallmarks of the form. Metafiction and/as postmodernism tended to be admonished, and continues to be admonished, for its seemingly nihilistic, corrosive, and irresponsible attitude toward reality itself—toward, that is, the possibility of truth claims, free will, and an objectively determinable moral code.

I want, though, to avoid (as much as possible in a book such as this) meandering too far backward into a debate about postmodern metafiction. To some degree, I have dealt with this debate already. My goal here, in these first few pages, is simply to set up the fact that the metafiction of postmodernism continued to be admonished by many of its consumers, even as critics initiated a celebration of its ability to “flaunt[] what is true of all novels: their ‘outstanding freedom to choose’” (Waugh 9–10). By the 1990s, then, and as (in large part) an effect of a celebratory push within academia, writers were almost ethically bound to be self-reflexive, to be ironic, to refuse the mendacious oversimplifications of premodern realism or the arrogances of modernist experimentation—as either could be associated with the assumption that true, or truer, modes of representation are possible. Of course, as I have noted elsewhere, a certain paradox haunts this ascension into what Hal Foster once termed (by way of a title for his seminal collection of essays on postmodernism) “the anti-aesthetic”:³ in the end, and necessarily, postmodern metafiction becomes the truest form of representation. We need look no further than Waugh’s 1984 phrasing to glean the spectacular nature of this paradox.

Nevertheless, and not surprisingly, metafiction exploded in the latter portion of the twentieth century. From the late 1970s onward, forms of metafiction appear everywhere—in cultural production both elite and popular. In America (specifically) we see it deployed in all manner of novels (obviously), a broad range of films (Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail [1975], Jim Henson’s The Muppet Movie [1979], Richard Rush’s The Stunt Man [1980], Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo [1985], Mel Brooks’s Spaceballs [1987], Penelope Spheeris’s Wayne’s World [1992], Robert Altman’s The Player [1992], John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness [1995], etc.), and various television programs (Jim Henson’s The Muppet Show [1976–81], Glenn Gordon Caron’s Moonlighting [1985–89], Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David’s Seinfeld [1989–98], David Lynch’s Twin Peaks [1990–1], Matt Groening’s The Simpsons [1989–], Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy [1999–], etc.). Children’s literature, popular song, comics, and videogames are yet other sites rife with examples. Think of Jon Stone’s The Monster at the End of This Book: Starring Lovable Furry Old Grover (1971), Tom Waits’s “Swordfishtrombone” (1983), Grant Morrison’s run of DC’s Animal Man (1988–90), or Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid 2 (2001). Somewhat more surprising is the fact that this late-century spread of metafictional forms and devices eventually becomes backdrop to a critical discussion about the waning, or failing efficacy, of postmodernism. By the early 2000s, postmodernism was, according to many, a dead episteme—and the proliferation of metafiction (especially in popular media) simply stands as the most obvious symptom of a cultural moment that has become, like Yeats’s spiraling falcon, too distant or too dispersed from its roots to be of critical or political use. (More on this later.) And yet the production of metafiction continued, and continues, undaunted. In terms of textual fiction, a list of “new” metafictionists would certainly include (for instance) Mark Z. Danielewski, Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer, David Foster Wallace, Mark Leyner, Gary Shteyngart, Jennifer Egan, Junot Díaz, Salvador Plascencia, and so on. And today’s metafictional films and television shows are almost too numerous and varied to count, though a representative sampling would surely include films such as Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000), Spike Jonze’s Adaptation (2002), Martin Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and Adam McKay’s The Big Short (2015) alongside television shows as diverse as Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000–), Mitchell Hurwitz’s Arrested Development (2003–19), Hart Hanson’s Bones (2005–17), Eric Kripke’s Supernatural (2005–20), Matthew Carnahan’s House of Lies (2012–16), and Beau Willimon’s House of Cards (2013–18). Perhaps, though, the best and most edifying example of metafiction’s veritable omnipresence in today’s (American) cultural production is Michael Jelenic and Aaron Horvath’s Teen Titans Go! (2013–), an extremely popular animated program for children.

Presented in a bright and simplistic style that might best be described as a parody of America’s co-option of anime, Teen Titans Go! offers short segments (two per twenty-minute episode) detailing the exploits of the Teen Titans, a group of young superheroes first introduced in the pages of DC comics. In many respects, the show is a follow-up to the earlier Teen Titans (2003–6)—a serious, if also animated, take on the DC heroes. Teen Titans Go!, however, is never anything other than a parody. The teenaged Titans—inclusive of Robin (Scott Menville), Starfire (Hynden Walch), Beast Boy (Greg Cipes), Raven (Tara Strong), and Cyborg (Khary Payton)—live free of parental supervision in a giant T-shaped tower on a small island outside “Jump City.” They spend the vast bulk of their time eating pizza, making fart jokes, making jokes about making fart jokes, and annoying one another. They often, also, break into song or musical numbers—with any number of absurd montages intruding upon the virtually nonexistent narratives. Consider, for instance, songs such as “Waffles, Waffles, Waffles,” “Booty,” or “Awesome America.” A running joke is that the Titans rarely, if ever, fight crime. Alongside these more implicit metafictional conceits (including, also, frequent references to a larger and often contradictory DC universe and previous adaptations of the Titan characters), the series often takes overtly metafictional turns. One of the segments in season 3 is, in fact, titled “The Fourth Wall” (2015). This segment begins with the Titans sitting on their couch watching television. A supervillain named Control Freak (Alexander Polinsky) soon appears on the screen and prevents the Titans from changing the channel. Frustrated, Robin tells Control Freak that his “evil pop culture references aren’t welcome here.” Ignoring Robin, Control Freak proceeds to inform the Titans that he has “the perfect show for [them] to watch.” Then, on the Titans’s TV screen, the intro to Teen Titans Go! begins to play—the exact same intro we just watched.

After realizing that they are the (fictional) show they are now watching, the Titans respond in typically humorous and absurd ways. They rush over to the “fourth wall” (which just happens to be fixed to the left of the couch they were sitting on) and stare out at their viewers. While looking at us, Raven reflects on the voyeuristic nature of both television and film: “People are watching us without our permission? Ew! What a bunch of creeps.” Control Freak, from their TV, then tells them that their show is garbage and that they will soon be rebooted—just as the old Teen Titans was rebooted as Teen Titans Go! A central complaint, Control Freak asserts, is the bad acting. Starfire, though, asserts (in her ostentatious alien accent) that “we are not the acting. This is how we are.” Nevertheless, after being shown images of their earlier, more sophisticated, rendering (in Teen Titans), the Titans accept their fictional status and commit themselves to becoming less infantile. They convince their animators to redraw them (on a computer that briefly takes over our screen) in a neo-Victorian style, and they adopt outrageously cliché English accents. At the very moment they think they have “won,” though, Control Freak reappears to inform them that, as per his plan, they have rebooted themselves. Disgusted with his trickery and their own willingness to sacrifice their integrity, the Titans decide that they “have to be true to [them]selves, even if it means being rebooted.” Robin then commands the Titans to “toot”—and a Victorian-esque title card with the word “TOOT” appears on screen. After directing a “fart song” at their TV, the Titans reappear in their previous form and Robin announces that the Titans are “proud of . . . what [they] represent” and that, if they are to preserve their “truth,” they must stop their broadcast by physically “break[ing] the fourth wall.” To do so, Beast Boy transforms into a ram and runs at our screen. Once the other Titans join his attack, the screen breaks and the segment abruptly ends—only to be immediately replaced by the next segment (“40%, 40%, 20%”), in which we learn that Cyborg’s strength is derived from a 1990s-esque ambient love song that he plays on his internal speakers. After the other Titans are convinced of the song’s power, they all transform into overly sexualized, or “serious,” versions of themselves. They are also transported to a desert-like plain. Here, they ride a five-person motorcycle, the wind blows dramatically through their hair, a robotic hawk and horse travel alongside them, and an impossibly full moon (with the face of a wolf) looks down upon their adventures. The “lesson,” as Cyborg puts it, is that “music can transform you” (even into the famous Transformer, Optimus Prime)—and that “music is its own reality.”

Other explicitly metafictional segments include season 3’s “History Lesson” (2016), in which the Titans tell each other increasingly absurd versions of historical events; season 3’s “The Art of Ninjutsu” (2016), in which the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Theory
• Part II Text
• Part III Screen
• Works Cited
• Index
• Copyright