Metareference in Three Selected Works by Charlie Kaufman

Masterarbeit

zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Master of Arts (MA)

an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

vorgelegt von Alisa Katharina PATTERER

am Institut für Anglistik Begutachter: O. Univ.-Prof. Mag.art. Dr.phil. Werner Wolf

Graz, 2015 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor, O.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Werner Wolf for inspiring my interest in the field of metareference. I would also like to thank him for always encouraging independent thought in his students and for sharpening my analytical skills through his detailed and honest feedback over the years.

Most of all, however, I would like to thank my family and friends, particularly those at CodeFlügel, for their never-ending patience and for ever so gently providing me with the necessary motivation to reach the finish line. I could literally not have done it without you. Table of Contents

1. Introduction 4

2. Theoretical Background

2.1. Various Forms of Metareference 7 2.2. Intramediality, Adaptation and Intermediality 9 2.3. Simulacra and Simulation as Metareferential Elements 13 2.4. Metareference and ist Use in Film 17

3. Metareference in Adaptation

3.1. A Short Synopsis of Adaptation 19 3.2. The various Levels of Adaptation 20 3.3. The Treatment of the Concept of Adaptation in Adaptation 24 3.4. Scene Analyses 3.4.1. The Beginning of Adaptation 27 3.4.2. Charlie Kaufman in his own Screenplay 31 3.4.3. The Ending - Donald Kaufman's Part 35 3.5. The Functions of Metareference in Adaptation 38

4. Metareference in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

4.1. A Short Synopsis of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 43 4.2. The (Metareferential) Structure of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 44 4.3. Metareferential Lacunae 47 4.4. Scene Analyses

4.4.1. After the Erasure - The Beginning of the Ending 53 4.4.2. Trying to Resist the Erasure 60 4.5. Functions of Metareference in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 66

5. Metareference in Synecdoche, New York

5.1. A Short Synopsis of Synecdoche, New York 71 5.2. The "Chinese Box World" of Synecdoche, New York 72 5.3. Scene Analyses

5.3.1. The Beginning with the Built-in End 77 5.3.2. The Creation of a Simulacrum 84 5.3.3. A Tragic Ending - The last few Scenes 88 5.4. Functions of Metareference in Synecdoche, New York 91

6. Conclusion 96

7. Works Cited 99 1. Introduction

The works of screenwriter and director Charlie Kaufman show unusual awareness of literary concepts, especially for large-scale Hollywood productions aimed at the mass market. Particularly the field of metareference in all its variations is strongly represented in Kaufman’s oeuvre. Using concepts such as metalepsis, mise-en-abyme and non-linear diegetic structures, he regularly explores questions of philosophy and the relation between literature and film as well as the relation between reality and fiction in his critically acclaimed films.

The three works selected for analysis in this thesis span six years and a wide array of filmic techniques inspired by the field of metareference, which has been a much studied subject in literature since the period of postmodernism. Despite the fact that it has entered the filmic mainstream over perhaps the last ten years, rarely any other filmmaker has explored this topic to the same extent and with the same regularity as Charlie Kaufman.

Chronologically the first one among the three selected films, Adaptation (2002) is an interesting example of both intermediality and metareference. Directed by Spike Jonze and written as an adapted screenplay by Charlie Kaufman, the film explores the boundaries between reality and fiction in an explicitly metareferential story about writing, creation and, eponymously, literary and filmic adaptation. The source material for the film was Susan Orlean’s non- fiction book The Orchid Thief. Rather than simply adapting the narrative to film, however, Kaufman also tells another story, namely that of the adaptation process. Thus Charlie Kaufman himself (played by Nicholas Cage) and Susan Orlean (played by Meryl Streep) are both present in the film’s diegesis.

Therefore, Adaptation presents the viewer with two distinct story levels, which are, however, curiously interwoven. As will be discussed in chapter three, the boundaries between reality and fiction in this film are not clearly delineated from the beginning and become ever more blurred as it takes its course. Therefore, the concepts of mise-en-abyme and metalepsis as they relate to Adaptation will also be discussed. This discussion will be followed by analyses of some important scenes in the film which illustrate its high level of metareference. Finally, in a separate chapter, possible functions of and reasons for the use of metareference in Adaptation will be explored.

The second film considered for analysis in this thesis is Eternal Sunshine of the

Spotless Mind (2004), directed by Michel Gondry and jointly written by Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry and Pierre Bismuth1. “If we seek, in Kaufman’s film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the formulaic, the comfortable, the linear character arc, the conclusion-driven plot sequence, we miss the point”, writes Kea Trevett (2009: 210) in an essay on the film. Indeed, the film is a highly artistic exploration of human consciousness in the form of memories. As the main characters have their memories erased and relive them in the process, the viewer here is confronted with a non-linear structure of hypodiegetic levels which become more and more entangled with each other even as they disappear into nothingness.

Also in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the adaptation not of narratives but of literary concepts into film is one of Kaufman’s interests. Here, the ‘lacuna’, a meaningful and deliberate blank in a text or narrative, is explored in various

1 The screenplay was written by Kaufman alone. However, the film at times represents such a strong departure from the contents of the shooting script, that Bismuth and Gondry (the film’s director) were also credited by the WGA (Writers Guild of America). (Cf. The internet movie database (2010). “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. IMDb. The Internet Movie Database. [Online]. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338013/fullcredits. [2015, Oct. 10].

5 forms. The representation of absence in film, however, differs from that in literature, also including performed drama, as the medium adds various discursive dimensions, such as the sound track and the recorded film track, which can be manipulated. Moreover, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in particular further thematizes absence itself (e.g. absence of memory, meaning, morality), thus adding another dimension which cannot be ignored when aiming to identify possible functions of metareference in this film.

The third and final film selected for analysis is Charlie Kaufman’s highly metareferential film Synecdoche, New York (2008), about a writer and director who attempts to build a realistic and life-sized replica of New York in a warehouse. The embedded world grows ever more detailed as actors are hired to play the parts of ‘real’ people, after which actors are hired to play their parts and so on, ad infinitum. Eventually, the director’s mimetic work develops a life of its own, forming an intricate structure of mises-en-abyme, which, to use Brian McHale’s term, resembles a “Chinese-box world” (McHale 1987: 112). In the end, the embedded world becomes a simulacrum in a succession of events which is similar, to name but one example, to the one in Julian Barnes’ novel England, England in which a replica of England built on the Isle of Wight takes the place of the ‘real’ England. Also similar to Barnes, one of Kaufman’s concerns in this film is the contrast between reality and fiction, between mimetic filmic representation of reality and simultaneously showing absurd and impossible transgressions from it.

In analyzing three reference examples of Charlie Kaufman’s oeuvre as a screenwriter and director, I hope to be able to identify key ideas and concerns in his films and to perhaps discover Kaufman’s reasons for choosing to use various forms of metareference to transmit those messages.

2. Theoretical Background

2.1. Various Forms of Metareference

As previously mentioned in the introduction to this paper, metareference has become a commonly used device in today’s popular cinema. While, prior to the 1990s, meta-films were predominantly shot as independent film productions, they now have a fixed place in Hollywood (cf. Gymnich 2007: 127). Originally, however, the concept of metareference was known under the narrower term metafiction and only used in literary analysis. Patricia Waugh defines metafiction as “fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality” (Waugh 1984: 2).

Werner Wolf then introduced the broader concept of metareference to include other media as well. First, a differentiation is made between heteroreference, medial signs pointing to the real world, and self-reference, signs referencing the entirety or parts of their own medial system. Metareference can therefore be classified as a special case of self-reference, which “establishes a secondary reference to texts and media […], viewing them ‘from the outside’ of a meta- level from whose perspective they are consequently seen as different from unmediated reality and the content of represented worlds” (Wolf 2009: 22f). Metareference within the medium of film is described by Jean-Marc Limoges as “any device that intentionally reveals […] the enunciative apparatus of film itself” (Limoges 2009: 392).

One such device frequently encountered in metareferential works is the mise- en-abyme. The term mise-en-abyme is translated as ‘putting into the abyss’ and refers to a device used primarily in literature, film and art.2 According to McHale (1987: 124), it is “one of the most potent devices in the postmodernist repertoire for foregrounding the ontological dimension of recursive structures”. As such, it is characterized by the recurrence (mirroring) of at least one significant element of a text or work on an ontologically or textologically lower level (cf. Wolf 2008a). Such a recurring element can be mirrored infinitely (similar to an object between two mirrors3), but not necessarily so. There are numerous forms in which mise-en-abyme can be employed, including the mirroring of multiple elements or the whole frame (i.e. the superior level) on a lower level or even the recurrence of only one element on multiple ‘cascading’ levels.

According to Wolf, the various levels can be connected through a relation of similarity, identity or even contrast, since the latter can imply a certain similarity (2009: 57). This relation can be conveyed through form or content (cf. Wolf 1998b). However, an occurrence of multiple, formally similar, levels within a work does not automatically render it metareferential. Metareferentiality only occurs, when a work points to itself, its medium and/or other works within that medium in order to create awareness of or foreground certain aspects (cf. Wolf 1998c). Therefore, not every instance where a character in a novel reads a book or a character in a film goes to the cinema is analytically relevant.

As already mentioned, one of the functions of mise-en-abyme is the foregrounding of certain aspects of a work, a genre or a medium, such as literature, art, film etc. One aspect which is inevitably foregrounded is the work’s fictionality status, the fact that it is not real but was created by somebody. Other

2 According to Wolf (2009:57), mise-en-abyme can also be found in instrumental music or mathematics 3 McHale (1987:112) compares such an “infinite regress” to “a set of Chinese boxes or Russian babushka dolls”.

8 elements which can be emphasized with this technique include the act of creation (e.g. writing a novel), certain themes within the work (Wolf 2009: 64f) or aspects of a character’s personality. Further “it may [...] imply a classificatory self-referential statement of the kind ‘I am a better work than the one in focus’ or ‘I belong as the same class of artifacts as the work referred to’” (ibid 64).

A phenomenon which often occurs in combination with mise-en-abyme is metalepsis, the transgression (of e.g. a character) from one (ontological or logical) level to another. Metalepsis is always intentional and can be achieved in different ways (cf. ibid 50). According to Nelles, there are three different types of metalepsis, rhetorical, epistemological and ontological metalepsis (cf. 1992: 93-

95). The rhetorical metalepsis only involves an imaginary transgression between the extra- and intradiegetic level by the narrator. When characters suddenly become aware of their fictionality, this is classified as an epistemological metalepsis. (cf. Wolf 2009: 52f) The most paradoxical form of metalepsis, however, is the ontological type which involves an “actual, physical transgression of a logical or ontological border between two levels/worlds by a character or object” (ibid 53). However, just as in the case of mise-en-abyme, metalepsis only has a strong potential for metareference, which has to be “actualized”, or in other words confirmed, through context involving explicit metareferentiality markers. (cf. ibid 55)

2.2. Intramediality, Adaptation and Intramediality

Werner Wolf defines intermediality as “eine intendierte, in einem Artefakt nachweisliche Verwendung oder Einbeziehung wenigstens zweier konventionell

9 als distinkt angesehener Ausdrucks-oder Kommunikationsmedien”4 (Wolf 1998a: 238). In contrast to Wolf’s definition, Irina Rajewski distinguishes between three forms of intermediality, Medienkombination, Medienwechsel and Intermediale Bezüge (Rajewski 2002: 17). She defines Medienkombination (combination of media) as the fusion of various media to create a new work of multimedia-art, while Medienwechsel (change of media) represents taking source material from one medium and changing it into another product using a different medium, as is the case in (most) filmic adaptations. Finally, Rajewski’s category of Intermediale Bezüge (intermedial references) constitutes the thematization of a different medium or of specific examples thereof by a product belonging to another distinct medium.

As we can see, Wolf’s definition of intermediality slightly differs from that of Irina Rajewski, in that it mostly applies to her first category, the combination of media, since her other two categories might rather be defined as instances of intramediality, i.e. the actual presence of only one medium, while one or multiple others are only suggested. However, since in Wolf’s definition also covers the mere representation or simulation of one medium within another, it also relates to Rajewski’s intermedial references.

In film, inter-, and intramediality are often used as metareferential devices, foregrounding elements and characteristics of the medium film by comparing it to other forms of medial transmission. Like, for example mise-en-abyme and metalepsis, intermediality only has metareferential potential which must be “actualized”, or in other words confirmed, through context involving explicit metareferentiality markers. (cf. Wolf 2009: 55).

4 “an intended use or integration of at least two media of expression or communication conventionally perceived as distinct, which is demonstrable in an artifact“ – my translation.

As discussed above, filmic adaptations can be classified as intramedial. However, some (rare) forms of filmic adaptation can also fall under the spectrum of intermediality, namely when the original source material is still visibly present and discernible as belonging to a different medium. This can, for example, be observed in Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation, where extracts from Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, the book the film is based on, appear in the film.

Filmic adaptations of written works have been a popular choice among filmmakers already since film came into existence as a new medium of artistic expression. Not least the fact that there is a separate Academy Awards category for the “Best Adapted Screenplay” illustrates the importance and pervasiveness of adaptations in the contemporary film industry. The art of adaptation itself, however, precedes the invention of film by far, and already Shakespeare, for example, regularly adapted preexisting poems, narratives etc. for his own purposes.

While, according to Linda Hutcheon, a majority of adaptations nowadays are “cinematic transpositions of literature” (Hutcheon 2006: xii), she argues that one cannot consider the topic of adaptation by looking at literature and film alone (cf. ibid xi). This section, however, will nevertheless deal with filmic adaptations of literature only, since a more detailed investigation of the principles of adaptation would exceed the scope of this paper.

First, a distinction must be made between various kinds of adaptations which have different aims and thus produce very distinct results. A number of ways of categorizing such differences have been proposed, notably by Geoffrey Wagner, who suggests three “modes of adaptation” (Wagner 1975: 219), namely transposition, commentary and analogy (cf. ibid 222-226). Here, transposition is the most literal form of adaptation and represents a direct translation from

11 novel to film with only a “minimum of apparent interference” (ibid 222). In a commentary, differences to the source are noticeable. These can either be unintentional or the result of a deliberate change on the part of the filmmaker. Examples of such a change might be a shift of focus from one theme or character to another or the introduction of a different storyline or ending. For an adaptation to be an analogy, it “must represent a fairly considerable departure for the sake of making another work of art” (ibid 226).

One reason for the introduction of these and similar categories is an ongoing thematization of the issue of fidelity to the original work. Audience, film reviewers and academic writers alike often judge the quality of a filmic adaptation by its faithfulness to the used source (cf. McFarlane 1996: 8). There is however, the question of how close a filmic adaptation can really come to the original novel. While, according to McFarlane, narrative is central to both novel and film and constitutes the “chief transferrable element” (1996: 12) between the two, the ways in which this narrative is related can differ greatly in the two media. One aim of this desired faithfulness to the source material is undoubtedly to “capture [its] spirit” (McFarlane 1996: 8), but if part of a novel’s spirit lies in the mode of narration used, a direct translation into film is seldom possible. First-person narration, for example, would thus be very difficult to relate without frequent voice-over or point-of-view shots (cf. ibid 15f). Although, it is theoretically possible, it is hardly done in more or less mainstream cinema which I would, however, like to limit this discussion to.

Also the element of unreliability is not easy to convey, since the default position of the viewer is to perceive a scene as an objective account, unless its reliability is explicitly negated. Of course, such negations can also be relatively subtle, since filmmakers also have elements at their disposal that novelists do not. First, the use of certain angles and camera positions in general, as well as editing

12 individual shots in a certain way greatly influence the viewer’s perception of a scene and can also help them to evaluate its truth status. Also lighting and, very importantly, music are used to ‘capture the spirit’ of a novel and might greatly shape the viewers’ interpretations of what they see. Other elements which are of crucial importance in filmmaking include art direction, set decoration and costumes, as well as the right casting.

The theme of metareference and the reality/fiction opposition are not treated very frequently in mainstream films, and therefore, adaptations of more metareferential novels are uncommon and usually differ greatly from the source material. Highly metareferential films tend to be original creations rather than adaptations. Accordingly, with the exception of Where the Wild Things Are, which was adapted from a short children’s book and Atonement, which is based on Ian McEwan’s novel of the same name, all the films referenced in the previous subchapter are original screenplays.

As for Charlie Kaufman’s oeuvre, two of the films analyzed in this thesis, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York, are original creations. The obvious exception is, of course, Adaptation, in which case, however, the source material does not feature any elements of metareference whatsoever.

2.3. Simulacra, Simulation and Film

Simulacra and simulation are concepts widely used in film. In contrast to more inherently metareferential structures, evidence of their integration cannot only be found in contemporary films. Moreover, simulacra and simulation are present in independently shot as well as Hollywood films. Primarily used in the Science- Fiction genre, these concepts seem to be a pervasive element in “films that treat

13 the growing indistinction between the real and the virtual”5, as Jean Baudrillard remarks in an interview with the Nouvel Observateur, naming The Truman Show (1998), Minority Report (2002) and Mulholland Drive (2001) as examples for this trend.

Fundamentally, the simulacrum can be defined as an empty signifier pointing to only itself. As such, it is not necessarily metareferential. However, it can become a meta-element in, for example, a film, when it shows the properties of self- reflexivity and medium-awareness. That is to say, when it occurs in combination with other meta-elements and/or comments on or lays bare the mediality of the work it is found in, the simulacrum can itself be a meta-element.

According to Baudrillard, also entire films or even whole genres of films can be classified as simulacra. In his essay “Simulacra and Science Fiction”, contained in Simulacra and Simulation, he defines three orders of simulacra: natural simulacra, productive simulacra and simulacra of simulation. Baudrillard further identifies utopia as belonging to the first and science fiction as belonging to the second order (though not explicitly referencing the medium of film) (cf. Baudrillard 2008: 121). He does not give examples for the third order, stating that “[t]oday it is the real that has become the alibi of the model¸ in a world controlled by the principle of simulation [...] because terrestrial space today is virtually coded, mapped, registered, saturated [...]” (ibid 122f).

Indeed, the virtualization of reality has progressed even further since Baudrillard made those observations. With technologies such as Augmented

5 Genosko, Gary, trans (2004). “The Matrix Decoded: Le Nouvel Observateur Interview with Jean Baudrillard” In: International Journal of Baudrillard Studies 1/2 [Online]. http://www2.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol1_2/genosko.htm#_edn1 [2015 September 25]

Reality6, we are no longer only “metaphorically projecting our vision onto the world”7 but are able, with the help of instruments such as the Google Glass8 for example, to actually superimpose textual or other medial information onto the real world. Another example of a step towards the creation of a simulacrum through virtual mapping of the real world is represented by an enhancement of Google Street View9, called Google Street View Hyperlapse10. This web-based map service offers not only static images to view points of interest, but uses animation technology to create the impression of actually travelling along the selected streets.

In contemporary film, therefore, it may be necessary to take the use of the simulacrum a step further as well. One frequently cited example of this is the film The Matrix (1999). While many films in which simulacra are used, show no awareness of the concept, the link to Baudrillard’s idea of the concept is made clear, when the main character is seen using a copy of Simulacra and Simulation as a hiding place. The book only contains the first page of the chapter “On Nihilism”, while the rest is hollowed out, rendering the book a simulacrum in itself. However, The Matrix was criticized, not least by Baudrillard himself, as a misunderstanding of the latter’s work. Baudrillard views The Matrix as “a synthesis” of other works that have also explored the difference “between the real and the virtual” (Genosko 2004). He further states, however, that “[t]he most

6 Augmented Reality (short: AR) technology makes it possible to enhance reality through virtual content in order to give additional information. A commonly cited example for AR is the line displayed in TV recordings of ski jumping competitions which signifies the leader’s jump distance. The virtual information thus directly references the real environment, since it is always displayed in the correct place. 7 Friedman, Dan (2003). “Simulacra, Simulation and Science Fiction”. In: Zeek June 03 [Online]. http://www.zeek.net/film_03063.shtml [2015 September 2] 8 Google Glasses are basically wearable computers which display existing AR content in the wearer’s surroundings. 9 An online map service in which the normal map is enhanced by 360° pictures taken of the actual environment which allow the user to virtually take a look around an area of interest. 10 This technology is not yet fully developed and thus only available as a demo version for select streets.

15 embarrassing part of the film is that the new problem posed by simulation is confused with its classical, Platonic treatment. This is a serious flaw.” (ibid)

Other films were more successful in their endeavors. For instance, two works by Charlie Kaufman directly thematize the ideas of the simulacrum and of the world as turning into one. One of these films is Being John Malkovich, where the actor John Malkovich plays a fictionalized version of himself. While this alone does not yet constitute a simulacrum, the plot also involves other characters finding a portal into the actor’s head through which they can control his actions and, in effect, replace him. As one of the characters is able to control Malkovich for longer and longer stretches of time, he lives the life he wishes to have while still being perceived as John Malkovich by the outside world. Finally, this is discovered by John Malkovich himself and the actor then proceeds to enter his own mind, whereupon all the people around him turn into Malkovich clones only capable of saying the word “Malkovich”. Also here, we can see Kaufman’s awareness of Baudrillard’s work, as the simulacrum is not only a seemingly ‘accidental’ (meta-) element, but is directly thematized as a feature of the main plot line of the film.

Of course, the second example for the thematization of simulacra in film is one of the films selected for analysis in this thesis, Synecdoche, New York. The film explores the aforementioned hyperreality of our modern world as well as the possibility of creating a true simulacrum in the performing arts. On an intradiegetic level, the chosen medium is theater, extradiegetically, it is, of course, film. The multi-layered exploration of the simulacrum in this film will therefore be analyzed in more detail in chapter 5 of this thesis.

2.1. Metareference and its Use in Film

Nowadays, certainly not only Charlie Kaufman’s films employ metareference as one of their main devices for storytelling. To illustrate the relative ubiquity of metareference in current cinema, I will now give a few fairly recent examples of instances where metareference was chiefly used to explore the R/F opposition. Frequently cited examples of metafilms exploring the R/F opposition are, in fact, the cinematic collaborations between Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze; Being

John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2002) (cf. Pfeifer 2009: 409), the second of which will, of course, be discussed more closely in this thesis. Also joining those ranks is the most recent feature film written and directed by Spike Jonze, Where the Wild Things Are (2009), in which a boy runs not only away from home but also into a world of his own imagining.11 A similar approach to the R/F opposition is explored in Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)12, which will also be analyzed, and Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010), where reality is contrasted with the fiction of memories (Eternal Sunshine) and dreams (Inception). Both movies also depict a (future) world where the boundaries of the R/F opposition have been changed through technology.

Another example of an explicitly metareferential film is Zach Helm’s Stranger than Fiction (2006), in which the protagonist becomes aware that he is in fact a character in a novel. By a narrator’s voice which he can hear in his head, he is told that he is about to die, which instills in him the determination to change his own fate. Paradoxically, he is able to find his narrator (and author) and to

11 Cf. The internet movie database (2010). “Where the Wild Things Are”. IMDb. The Internet Movie Database. [Online]. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0386117/. [2015, Oct. 10]. 12 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a collaboration between Gondry and Charlie Kaufman. (Cf. The internet movie database (2010). “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. IMDb. The Internet Movie Database. [Online]. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338013/. [2015, Oct. 10].)

17 eventually meet her in person, thus metaleptically transgressing from one narrative level to another.

A similar structure can be observed in Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), the protagonist of which is fascinated by cinema. While watching one of her favorite films, which is also named “The Purple Rose of Cairo”, for the fifth time, the main character from the film begins to talk to her and eventually even leaves the movie screen in order to talk to her. This is not the only metaleptic transgression which can be observed in the film, as Cecilia, as the heroine is called, later also crosses the line between reality and fiction embodied by the movie screen into the fictional world of the film.

An example for a metareferential film adapted from a novel is Atonement (2007). Directed by Joe Wright, the film version of Atonement is clearly intended to be as faithful as possible to its source. One of the novel’s main motifs, however, the ambiguous reality/fiction opposition, seems to be developed to a lesser extent in the film. While the structure is quite similar in novel and film, it is the coda which mostly renders the novel ambiguous and ultimately makes it metareferential. The fact that, in the film, this coda is presented in the form of a TV interview (with definitive answers as opposed to an ambiguously phrased postscript) considerably lessens this effect.

Other noteworthy examples include the films The Truman Show (1998), Galaxy Quest (1999), Spaceballs (1987) (cf. Gymnich 128f) and Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry (1997).

3. Metareference in Adaptation

3.1. A Short Synopsis of Adaptation

Adaptation tells the story of the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s process of adapting Susan Orlean’s novel The Orchid Thief into the very film we are watching. While the last movie Charlie Kaufman (Nicholas Cage) has written, Being John Malkovich, is still being filmed, he is tasked with adapting Orlean’s non-fiction novel, which was previously adapted from an article into a book by the author herself. Kaufman has difficulties with this project, struggling between not finding enough adaptable substance in the book and wishing to remain as faithful to the source material as possible.

Living with him is his twin brother Donald Kaufman (also played by Nicholas Cage), who is also a screenwriter but in most other respects the complete opposite of Charlie. While Charlie is socially awkward and worried about what others think of him, Donald is more outgoing and adventurous in life as well as in his writing. Donald is also working on a screenplay, which is far more sensationalist and commerce-driven than his brother’s. While Charlie has a rough time starting his screen play, taking various different attempts and looking at the material from different angles, Donald finishes his thriller and proceeds to sell it to Charlie’s agent who thinks it could be very successful. At that point, Charlie decides to take Donald’s advice and help. He takes part in a screen writing seminar by famous creative writing instructor Robert McKee (played by Brian Cox), to which he had been opposed before, and even asks Donald to help him write his screenplay.

Simultaneously, the film also follows the story of how Susan Orlean (played by Meryl Streep) researches for and proceeds to write her novel The Orchid Thief. In these scenes, which are set three years previously, Orlean travels to Florida in order to spend time with horticulturist and occasional criminal John Laroche (played by Chris Cooper). Laroche was standing trial for poaching orchids from Florida’s Fakahatchee Strand when he sparked the Orlean’s interest and now introduces the author to his world of orchids.

Three years later, when Donald has become involved in writing Charlie’s screenplay, the brothers suspect that Orlean and Laroche are having an affair and follow Orlean to Florida, where they find the pair indulging in drugs. When

Orlean and Laroche discover that Charlie and Donald have been watching them, they plot to kill them at the remote Fakahatchee Strand. There, the brothers manage to escape into the marshes where they spend the night. When they try to flee by car the next morning, Donald is shot in the chest by Laroche and eventually dies in a car accident while the brothers try to escape. Charlie manages to go back to Los Angeles and finally figures out how to write his screenplay.

3.2. The various Levels of Adaptation

The ontological structure of Adaptation is not a simple and straightforward one. The film seems to consist of two major levels with more or less clearly delineated borders. The levels’ structure can best be explained by placing them not only in relation to each other but also within the context of the reality/fiction opposition, as visualized in image 1 below.

image1: Diagram of the various levels of Adaptation in relation to the reality/fiction opposition.

The two levels shown in the above diagram are the main ontological levels of the film. The film’s diegetic level, which consists of two different sections, tells the story of Charlie Kaufman’s adaptation process as well as the story of Susan Orlean writing her novel. The dotted line between them represents their temporal separation (they are set three years apart). Reality, or factual truth, is represented by the outer black line in the diagram. The further to the middle elements are situated, the further they are from reality. As we can see, the two main storylines have roughly the status in relation to actual reality, since they both represent fictionalized versions of real people and events, but also substantial deviations from this mirrored reality.

One way of analyzing the screenplay to Adaptation is to further suppose a (main) hypodiegetic level, which consists of the adapted scenes from The Orchid Thief. In addition to this main hypodiegetic level, there are a few other short quasi-hypodiegetic segments, which are all taking place in Charlie Kaufman’s imagination. As illustrated by the dotted line around the hypodiegetic level (i.e. the scenes directly adapted from The Orchid Thief), its borders are not clearly delineated, making it hard to judge if and where any metaleptic transgressions

21 occur. For instance, some of the scenes which are clearly recognizable as having been directly transposed from the novel are accompanied by a voice-over by Susan Orlean or variously John Laroche. However, the Susan Orlean and John Laroche characters are the same as on the diegetic level (as opposed to other actors playing adapted versions of the fictionalized characters, such as will later occur in Synecdoche, New York). Other scenes which could be ascribed to this level are not featured in the original source material but might nevertheless be recognized as belonging to a hypodiegetic level in the context of the screenplay. This applies, for example, to one of the first scenes of the film which is marked as being set in “Hollywood, California”, “Four billion and forty years earlier” (Adaptation. The Shooting Script. 2002: 3). See section 3.4.1. for a more in-depth discussion of this. The hypodiegetic level is, therefore, not unified, which poses the question whether it would not be more accurate to view the entire screenplay or film as a single mise-en-abyme to the viewer’s reality which contains several additional quasi-hypodiegetic episodes (i.e. the ones imagined by the fictional Kaufman) representing alternate versions to the diegetic level’s fictional reality. Thus, another way of interpreting the screenplay is to view its entire visible structure as belonging to one single diegetic level.

However, in spite of this proposed absence of a tangible hypodiegetic level within the film and any identifiable metalepses to or from it, it would, of course, be inaccurate to classify the film as anything other than a work of metafiction. In fact, Adaptation is a true mise-en-abyme with meta-functions, in the sense that in itself it represents an infinite regress which has its ultimate source in our reality; i.e. the real Charlie Kaufman writes a screenplay about Charlie Kaufman writing a screenplay about Charlie Kaufman and so forth, each iteration perhaps straying a little further from reality until the screenplay is being written by Charlie Kaufman and an infinite number of fictional siblings. The characteristic cascading levels of the mise-en-abyme are undeniably present, but perhaps

22 merely by inference, as the visibility of these hypodiegetic levels is, as discussed, highly debatable.

This hypothesis is, however, supported by the fact that the film’s only clearly identifiable metaleptic transgression occurs, most paradoxically, between its diegetic level and the actual reality (as represented by the dotted line separating the two on the left-hand side of the above diagram). Most of the characters featured in Kaufman’s screenplay have real-life counterparts, with the notable exception of Donald Kaufman, Charlie’s identical twin brother in the film. His metaleptic transgression is so paradox that it escapes classification. In Nelles’ terms, it lies somewhere between a rhetorical and an ontological metalepsis, as

Donald is, of course, not able to actually physically transgress the line between reality and fiction; But his transgression is also far more than merely an imagined one. Donald Kaufman is credited as a co-author of the screenplay to Adaptation on the cover of the script, the DVD and so forth, as well as on major film websites such as the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).13 As such, Donald Kaufman was also nominated for various film prizes14, among them an Academy Award in the category of “Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay”, along with Charlie Kaufman. The pair even won the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award for their screenplay, though neither of them was able to accept it in person. Further, Donald Kaufman also receives a credit in the film itself, which is dedicated to him “In Loving Memory” (Adaptation. The Shooting Script. 2002: 100). In interviews, Charlie Kaufman refuses to discuss the existence or rather non-existence of Donald in-depth saying for example that “[t]o say Donald's a creation of mine is something I don't want to do. We're presenting this movie as

13 The internet movie database (2002). “Adaptation”. IMDb. The Internet Movie database [Online]. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268126 [2015, October 11] 14 Ibid. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0442134/awards [2015, October 11]

23 written by Charlie and Donald”15, thus maintaining his fictional twin brother’s paradoxical metalepsis.

In light of this, and with regard to the relationship between reality and fiction in Adaptation, it could therefore be said that the story itself, like an ouroboros16 or a möbius strip, is transgressing its own boundaries from fiction into reality or vice versa. In other words, the world represented in Adaptation resembles a reality/fiction (R/F) continuum more than an R/F opposition.

3.3. The Treatment of the Concept of Adaptation in Adaptation

As the film’s title already suggests, the exploration of the adaptation process is perhaps the main theme in Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation. Further, this highly metareferential film examines the topics of writing and creation, as well as the issues of veracity and faithfulness in the adaptation of literature to film. As already discussed in section 2.3. of this thesis, faithfulness to the source material is a much debated topic in the field of adaptation studies. The film Adaptation as a whole is certainly not a direct translation of Susan Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief, but, in Geoffrey Wagner’s terminology, rather an analogy – “a fairly considerable departure [from the source] for the sake of making a new work of art” (Wagner 1975: 226). Interestingly, however, some of the film’s scenes also remain very true to their source.

In order to fully delineate the similarities and differences between source material and film in the case of Adaptation, however, it is first necessary to give

15 Topel, Fred. “An Unorthodox ADAPTATION: Deciphering Charlie Kaufman”. [Online] http://www.screenwritersutopia.com/article/d1471d19 [2015, October 12] 16 The concept of the ouroboros is also directly referenced in the script to Adaptation, hinting at Kaufman’s conscious creation of precisely this R/F continuum and further his informed and strategic use of metareferential elements in order to convey his message. This point, however, will be discussed more closely in section 4 of this chapter.

24 a brief overview of The Orchid Thief, as it is a real book which, along with its author and subject, was fictionalized in Adaptation. Susan Orlean’s non-fiction book was originally written as an article for The New Yorker entitled “Orchid Fever”. Orlean then expanded, one might even say adapted, the material she had collected into a book. The Orchid Thief, however, is not only an investigative report on the illicit practices of John Laroche, but also a quite poetic story about the botanical landscape and the history of Florida, various forms of passion and not least people’s fascination for orchids. Nevertheless, it is a very “straightforward book” with only one story line and “very little drama”, as

Charlie Kaufman remarks in an interview (Adaptation. The Shooting Script. 2002: 123). This and the fact that Orlean’s book does not necessarily seem to lend itself to being made into a film, Kaufman cites as his initial reasons for wanting to adapt The Orchid Thief into a screenplay (ibid).

As mentioned above, when viewed as a whole, the film Adaptation bears only a minor resemblance to its source. However, some of its passages are clearly recognizable as having been adapted from The Orchid Thief. These parts are often word for word renderings of Orlean’s writing, related in voice over by her character. Even when there is no voice over, a strong similarity to the book can be observed.

In a scene relatively at the beginning of the movie, for example, we see the character of John Laroche stealing orchids from Florida’s Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve, accompanied by a group of Seminole Indians. The only real notable difference between book and film here is the mode of narration, which is telling in the book and showing in the film. One might suggest, however, that this is mainly due to the difference in the narrative conventions in literature and film. The same holds true for a scene set in a Florida courthouse, where, according to The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean first met John Laroche. Orlean’s

25 descriptions of the proceedings and of Laroche were directly transposed and also the dialogue was directly taken from the book, albeit in an expanded version.

Further, not only the descriptive parts, but also the book’s poetic nature was transposed into film. However, it is in this case more a transposition of the book’s inherent poetic quality than of actual passages. Nevertheless, the correspondence between book and film is clearly identifiable. To give an example for this, what follows is a short extract from The Orchid Thief, namely one of Orlean’s occasionally poetic musings on the Florida landscape:

[T]here is something about Florida more seductive and inescapable than almost anywhere else I’ve been. It can look brand-new and man-made, but as soon as you see a place like the Everglades or the Big Cypress Swamp or the Loxahatchee you realize that Florida is really wild. The tame part is really tame. Both, though, are always in flux: The developed places are just little clearings in the jungle, but since jungle is unstoppably fertile, it tries to reclaim a piece of developed Florida every day. […] Nothing seems hard or permanent; everything is always changing or washing away. Transition and mutation merge into each other, a fusion of wetness and dryness, unruliness and orderliness, nature and artifice. (The Orchid Thief 2000: 9)

Sometimes such passages from the book are featured as a voice over by the character of Susan Orlean in the film. At other times, however, the poetic quality is expressed in other ways. As an element of comparison, there is a scene where Susan Orlean accompanies John Laroche to an orchid show. This scene arguably exhibits similar poetic qualities, through the combination of various devices such as music, lighting and overall coloring, as visible in the images below.

image 2 image 3 image 4

In Wagner’s terminology, therefore, those scenes could be categorized as a transposition. If merely they were put together and viewed on their own, the viewer would probably have a very good idea of what The Orchid Thief is about.

The transposed scenes, however, merely account for less than half of the film’s total length. The rest of the film tells, as discussed, (a fictionalized version of) the story of how the screenplay was written, with Charlie Kaufman also appearing as a character in his own script. As such, the film strongly plays with the reality- fiction opposition and offers various (explicitly) metareferential comments on not only the adaptation process, but also on the film industry as a whole. This point will be discussed in more detail in the following scene analysis section of this chapter (see subsection 3.4.3).

3.4. Scene Analyses

3.4.1. The Beginning of Adaptation

The first scene of Adaptation visually consists of a black screen. While the movie’s opening credits appear on the bottom of the screen, a man’s voice can be heard. It is, however, not, as the viewer might expect, the voice of a narrator, but a voice over by the main character of the film proper who is also a fictionalized version of its author, Charlie Kaufman. The screen remains black during the character’s entire monologue (ca. 1.5 minutes), the first sentence of

27 which already establishes one of Adaptation’s main themes, namely that of original creation versus adaptation.

KAUFMAN (VOICE OVER) Do I have an original thought in my head? (Adaptation. The Shooting Script.2002: 1)

This initial question seems to be answered by the blackness of the screen, as well as the rest of the monologue, which mainly consists of clichéd statements and generalizations. Then the scene is cut to footage shot by a handheld camera, clearly recognizable as such by the lower graphic quality and shaky camera movement. A title at the bottom of the screen says “On the set of “Being John Malkovich” Summer 1998” (Adaptation. The Shooting Script 2002: 2) (see image1 below). We see John Malkovich, who is introduced by a further title on the screen, explaining something to the crew, various members of which are introduced in the same way. It is unclear, whether this footage is real or reenacted for the purposes of the present film, since the members of the crew (as well as Malkovich, of course) are the actual people that were involved in the production of Being John Malkovich. In any case, there is a curious mixture of reality and fiction, as the last person to be introduced is “Charlie Kaufman, Screenwriter” (Adaptation. The Shooting Script. 2002: 3) (see image 2 below), as represented by Nicholas Cage. Also the camera technique in combination with the titles is very reminiscent of the look and style of a documentary which clashes with the obviously fictionalized version of the screenwriter. Kaufman is then asked to leave the set, because he is in the shot, whereupon he introduces what might be viewed as the beginning of the film within the film in a second voice over.17

KAUFMAN (VOICE OVER)

17 As discussed, the presence of a visible hypodiegetic level is, however, debatable.

What am I doing here? [...] Why did I bother to come here today? Nobody even seems to know my name. I’ve been on this planet for forty years, and I’m no closer to understanding a single thing. Why am I here? How did I get here? (ibid).

Again, his question is answered. Two subsequent titles reveal the following scenes being set in “Hollywood, California”, “Four billion and forty years earlier” (ibid) (see image 3 below). These are followed by a montage of various processes of evolution symbolized by e.g. the formation of land and the development of animals as well as a fox being eaten by larvae and a baby being born (see images 4-6 below). The fact that these scenes could be viewed as marking the beginning of the film within the film is not explicitly made clear at this point. However, at a later point in the movie, Kaufman records various ideas as to how to begin his screenplay, some of which closely resemble these scenes at the beginning.

KAUFMAN (CONT’D) (into tape recorder) Start right before life begins on the planet. All is...lifeless. And then, like, life begins. Um...with organisms. Those little single cell ones. [...] Uh, from there we go to bigger things. Jellyfish. And then that fish that got legs on it and crawled out on the land. And then we see, you know, like, um dinosaurs. [...] And then an asteroid comes and, and (making explosion sound) Phwark! (Adaptation. The Shooting Script. 2002: 41).

While Kaufman’s ideas do not fully correspond to the eventual beginning, they can be seen as a meta-element presenting the viewer with a version of the origination process of a screenplay to which the finished film does then not necessarily conform in all aspects. For example, also the shooting script of Adaptation contains several scenes which were eventually cut from the film.

image 5 image 6 image 7

image 8 image 9 image 10

From this, the movie cuts back to what would then be the diegetic level, where we see Charlie Kaufman sitting in a restaurant with a movie executive explaining his approach to adapting Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief.

KAUFMAN (CONT’D) [...] It’s great, sprawling New Yorker stuff, and I’d want to remain true to that. You know? I’d want to let the movie exist, rather than be artificially plot driven. [...] I just don’t want to ruin it by making it a Hollywood thing. [...] Why can’t there be a movie simply about flowers?

VALERIE

I guess we thought that maybe Susan Orlean and Laroche could fall in love, and— KAUFMAN (blurting) Okay. But I’m saying, it’s, like, I don’t want to cram in sex or guns or car chases. You know? Or characters learning profound life lessons. [...] Or growing, or coming to like each other, or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end. You know? I mean, the book isn’t like that, and life isn’t like that. It just isn’t. (beat, weakly) I feel very strongly about this. (Adaptation. The Shooting Script. 2002: 5f)

The script here is explicitly and directly metareferential, pointing to its own creation as well as the film industry (and particularly Hollywood) as a whole.

Moreover, this short exchange, which might seem relatively insignificant in the first viewing of the film, could actually be seen as a key moment in the script, as it represents a foreshadowing of most of the films major developments and plot points. As we will also observe later in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and particularly in Synecdoche, New York, this technique of subtly presenting the viewer with the work’s major themes at the very beginning and later mirroring them in order for the screenplay to form a closed circle (or an ouroboros, so to speak) seems common to Kaufman’s work. Of course, to some extent, the same

30 holds true for most successful creations. Establishing a key idea or theme at the beginning of any narrative work (be it an essay, a poem, a story or a song) in order to develop it further is a central narrative convention. However, Kaufman’s approach seems to be more iterative and circulatory than most. In the present case, many of the developments thematized in this exchange and which will take place later in the script, are explicitly negated at this point. In other words, the fictional Kaufman sets out with the intention of doing almost the exact opposite of what develops later, which can be interpreted as a metareferential comment by his real-life counterpart on the struggle for faithfulness in adaptation as well as Hollywood’s tendency to favor box-office success over more artistic and experimental but perhaps less popular forms of presentation.

However, this point will be further discussed in section 3.5.

After the restaurant scene, another voice over marks the transition to the story of Susan Orlean’s adaptation process, namely that of turning her magazine article into a novel. The voice belongs to the fictionalized version of Susan Orlean who we see sitting at her computer writing her book. Another title at the bottom of the screen sets the scene at the “New Yorker Magazine, Three Years Earlier” (Adaptation. The Shooting Script. 2002: 6). The fact that the title references the timeline of the previous scene shows that while there is a temporal separation, the scenes seem to belong to the same diegetic level. The same logic should therefore apply to the scene happening ‘four billion years earlier’, again supporting the hypothesis that any existing hypodiegetic levels are only present by inference.

3.4.2. Charlie Kaufman in his own Screenplay

The fictionalized Kaufman is present in the diegesis of the film from the beginning. Therefore, his presence does not represent a metaleptic

31 transgression in any of the senses delineated by Nelles, but is arguably established as part of the film’s reality and thus of the initial viewing contract between film and audience. Moreover, Kaufman’s mere presence would by and in itself not automatically constitute a meta-element. The incorporation of fictionalized versions of real people in books, films, etc. is also common practice for example in biographical stories, if seldom outside of this genre. While Kaufman’s intradiegetic appearance thus presents a break from convention, it is not as surprising and metaleptic in nature as for instance a narrator’s or author’s appearance in a novel halfway through the story, such as is the case, for example, in John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman. However, the fact that the film shows the fictionalized version of its own creation still provides a highly metareferential context, rendering elements which might otherwise be categorized as instances of iconic self-reference metareferential as well.

Therefore, the same can be said for elements which foreshadow or are mirrored in later scenes. As discussed previously, Kaufman’s intentions of how to adapt The Orchid Thief are clearly delineated in the scene at the beginning in which he discusses his writing assignment with Valerie the Hollywood executive. His goal is to write a movie about flowers without including any artificial plot devices or turning to a different genre in order to make the movie more appealing for the general public.

As the film goes on, however, Charlie runs into more and more difficulties when writing his screenplay, which is something apparently very close to the reality of what actually happened. In an interview included as a supplement to the Shooting Script to Adaptation Kaufman remarks, “The movie’s pretty accurate in its depiction of my false starts and my confusion, and how I just had to plug away because I was hired and because they had paid me a certain amount of money to proceed, and so I had to.” (Adaptation. The Shooting Script. 2002: 123).

As Kaufman’s struggle to adapt The Orchid Thief is portrayed, his gradual decision to put himself into the screenplay is thematized, which can be seen in the following extract from the film.

KAUFMAN (VOICE OVER) Who am I kidding? This is not Susan Orlean’s story. I have no connection with her. I can’t even meet her. I can’t meet anyone. I have no understanding of anything outside of my own panic and self-loathing and pathetic little existence. It’s like the only thing I’m actually qualified to write about is myself and my own self – His eyes light up.

INT. EMPTY BEDROOM - DAY Kaufman paces with great energy and speaks into a handheld tape recorder.

KAUFMAN (into tape recorder) We open on Charlie Kaufman, fat, old, bald, repulsive, sitting in a Hollywood restaurant across from Valerie Thomas […]. Kaufman, trying to get a writing assignment… wanting to impress her, sweats profusely. (Adaptation. The Shooting Script. 2002: 58f)

Here, the scene at the beginning referenced above is mirrored and thereby the movie’s fictionality and metareferential nature are foregrounded. However, this metareferential mirroring is taken one step further when, directly after this, the scene we have just seen is mirrored yet again.

KAUFMAN (CONT’D) (into tape recorder) Fat, bald Kaufman paces furiously in his bedroom. He speaks into his hand-held tape recorder, and says “Charlie Kaufman, fat, bald, repulsive, old, sits at a Hollywood restaurant with Valerie Thomas…” (Adaptation. The Shooting Script. 2002: 59)

However, this extract not only mirrors the previous scene but, on a meta-level, also alludes to the film’s highly repetitive and ultimately metareferential nature by mirroring the mise-en-abyme the entire movie is based on. And as if to make sure to “trigger a meta-awareness” (Wolf 2009: 44) in the audience with a “high degree of discernibility or ‘obviousness’” (ibid 45), the relative absurdity and unusual nature of this plot point is discussed again in the following scene.

KAUFMAN I’m insane. I’m Ourobouros. [sic.] [...] I’ve written myself into my screenplay. DONALD Oh. That’s kinda weird, huh? KAUFMAN It’s self-indulgent. It’s narcissistic. It’s solipsistic. It’s pathetic. [...] DONALD I’m sure you had good reasons, Charles. You’re an artist. KAUFMAN [...] Because I have no idea how to write. Because I can’t make flowers fascinating. [...] (Adaptation. The Shooting Script. 2002: 60)

As already discussed, the film also often transgresses its own boundaries from reality into fiction, blurring the lines between the two, just like the ancient symbol of the ouroboros (a snake swallowing its own tail). The most striking instance of this is the introduction of Charlie Kaufman’s fictitious twin brother Donald in the diegesis of the film. It is therefore also highly significant that this discussion takes place between the two brothers, who represent not only two competing aspects of Kaufman’s personality as a screenwriter but also two competing attitudes towards screenwriting in general. As discussed previously, Donald is also an aspiring screen writer, who uses techniques he learns in a screenwriting seminar by Robert McKee18 to write and sell a successful original screenplay, while Charlie, who is initially opposed to McKee’s teachings, struggles to complete his adapted one. Also from a diegetic point of view, Donald and Charlie are very different from each other, which leads to numerous discussions between the two of them about their approaches to and ideas about screenwriting. Eventually, however, as Donald sells the screenplay he has been working on for a substantial amount, the diegetic Kaufman agrees to visit one of McKee’s seminars and asks Donald to help him finish his script.

18 Robert McKee is an actual creative writing instructor whose popular “Story Seminar” also served as the inspiration for the screenwriting seminar in Adaptation.

3.4.3. The Ending – Donald Kaufman’s Part

When Donald, who represents a very mainstream approach to filmmaking as opposed to Charlie’s more independent one, takes over, the film undergoes a radical change in genre. Ironically, the diegetic Kaufman’s reservations about not remaining entirely faithful to the source (see extract from the script above) perfectly describe the plot developments towards the film’s ending. Susan Orlean and John Laroche also appear in this part of the film. However, even though the transition between Charlie’s and Donald’s writing is clearly identifiable, it cannot simply be viewed as the demarcation line between reality and fiction in the movie, since Donald’s presence from the very beginning renders the whole film unreliable in this respect, further supporting the previously proposed theory of the film as a unified hypodiegetic level within a mise-en-abyme.

The transition from Charlie’s perspective to that of Donald is denoted through a physical border transgression by the majority of the main characters. Convinced that there is more to Susan Orlean’s story than what is written in her book, the Kaufman brothers follow her to Florida where she visits John Laroche. The events unfolding from this point onwards are all contained in the already much referenced restaurant scene at the beginning of the film (see page 30 for transcript).

When Charlie and Donald get to Florida and see Laroche picking Susan Orlean up from the airport, they follow them to Laroche’s house. It seems that the pair has indeed started a secret relationship. Additionally, Orlean and Laroche are high on a drug extracted from the so-called ghost orchid. Suddenly, Laroche discovers Charlie spying on them through the window. A conversation between them ensues, which in its dialogue and setup is somehow reminiscent of a

35 metaleptic transgression of a writer into the diegetic level of his own story. In absence of any evidence for the existence of a logical or ontological hierarchy within this scene, however, this occurrence could perhaps be interpreted as an implicit meta-element designed to allude to the reversal of roles in this section of the film.

ORLEAN Who is that, Johnny? […] KAUFMAN I just – Nobody. LAROCHE Huh?! KAUFMAN I just – I’m just – ORLEAN Wait a minute. […] You know who th-- He’s that screenwriter. LAROCHE The guy that’s adapting our book? […] (suddenly thrilled) Well, that’s wild. (to Kaufman, shaking his hand) It’s nice to meet you. Hey, dude, who’s gonna play me? KAUFMAN I’m not-- I don’t know that. I should-- LAROCHE Well, I thought I should play me. (Adaptation. The Shooting Script. 2002: 87f)

As opposed to John Laroche, Susan panics and decides that the writer has seen too much and that they must kill him. They put Charlie in the trunk of Laroche’s car and drive to the Fakahatchee strand with Donald, who had been hiding in a rental car outside following them. As they arrive there, Susan threatens Charlie with a gun preparing to kill him, when Charlie is saved at the last minute by Donald who drags him into the swamp. Orlean and Laroche follow them, but cannot find them in the dark. The two brothers are left hiding behind a tree where they talk to each other, finally managing to resolve the conflicts between them.

KAUFMAN I don’t want to die, Donald. I’ve wasted my life. […] I admire you, Donald, you know? I spent my whole life paralyzed, worrying about what people think of me, and you, you’re just oblivious. […] I mean that as a compliment. There was this time in high school. I was watching you out the library window and you were talking to Sarah Marsh. […] And, you

were flirting with her and she was being really sweet to you. […] And then when you walked away she started making fun of you with Kim Canetti. And it was like they were, they were laughing at me. I mean … you didn’t know at all. You seemed so happy. DONALD I knew. I heard them. KAUFMAN Well, how come you were so happy? DONALD I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn’t have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want. KAUFMAN But she thought you were pathetic. DONALD That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That’s what I decided a long time ago.

Kaufman and Donald sit there for a long while in silence. Kaufman starts to cry softly.

DONALD (CONT’D) What’s up? KAUFMAN Thank you. (Adaptation. The Shooting Script. 2002: 92f)

The next morning, the brothers try to escape, but Laroche discovers them and in the ensuing struggle shoots Donald in the arm. When Charlie tries to take him to the hospital in the car, they get into an accident and, with the brothers finally reconciled, Donald dies. Orlean and Laroche catch up to Charlie and chase him once more into the swamp. On the point of killing him again, however, Laroche is suddenly attacked and killed by an alligator. Distraught, Orlean finally gives up.

Thus, the situation is not only resolved by way of a deus ex machina, but almost all of the plot elements Kaufman initially rejected as being too ‘Hollywood’ are now ‘crammed’ into the last few minutes of the movie. All that is left is a character ‘overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end’. This character, of course, is Charlie Kaufman himself, who finally figures out how to finish his script some time later when driving home from lunch one day. Thus, with one final allusion to its metareferential nature, the movie ends and has come full circle.

KAUFMAN (VOICE OVER)

I have to go right home. I know how to finish the script now. It ends with Kaufman driving home after his lunch with Amelia, thinking he knows how to finish the script. […] It feels right. Conclusive. […] Kaufman drives off from his encounter with Amelia, filled for the first time with hope. I like this. This is good. (Adaptation. The Shooting Script. 2002: 99f)

3.5. Functions of Metareference in Adaptation

The reasons Charlie Kaufman gives for using metareferential devices in Adaptation, intra-diegetically as well as in interviews, are his difficulties in adapting Susan Orlean’s book and the need to overcome his writer’s block. However, as has transpired in this analysis, the intra- as well as the extradiegetic Kaufman are unreliable sources with regard to the relationship between reality and fiction. Further, trusting the word of the author in this matter is seldom a good approach to interpreting any work of fiction. Therefore, one of the main functions of the metareferential devices used in Adaptation is probably to comment on certain aspects of Hollywood filmmaking. A good example for this is provided, again, in the restaurant scene at the beginning of the movie. The scene shows the juxtaposition between executive and screenwriter and, on a larger scale, between the attitudes to adaptation and screen writing in general they represent. Profit-oriented Hollywood popularism clashes with artistic expression and faithfulness to the source material.

Firstly, conformance to the mainstream is, of course, an issue in the adaptation of literature to film, especially, when the source is not a traditional novel or is narrated in a manner not easily adaptable with traditional cinematic methods. Therefore, the question of whether complete faithfulness to the source material is the only way to stay true to it or to accurately represent in an adaptation is

38 certainly also at the core of Adaptation and Kaufman uses metareference to illustrate his stance. While the scenes which represent a direct transposition19 from novel to film succeed in relating what happens in The Orchid Thief, Kaufman’s introduction of a meta-level better conveys the non-fiction novel’s occasional poetic quality and wonderfully captures its reoccurring themes of passion as well as the longing for meaning and purpose in life. Therefore, even though Adaptation in large parts represents only an analogy to its source, its continued faithfulness to many important aspects of it cannot be denied.

Further, mainstream and independent20 filmmaking with regard to screenwriting in general are contrasted and examined more closely within Adaptation’s metareferential structure. Supporting this hypothesis is the existence of Donald Kaufman in the screenplay. As discussed previously, the fictitious Donald also appears outside of the film’s diegesis, as he is officially credited as a co-writer of the screenplay to Adaptation.21 The real Charlie Kaufman refuses to discuss Donald’s reality status in detail stating that “Donald's existence or non-existence is something that we don't want to address because the movie is credited to Charlie and Donald. That is an important element in understanding the movie. What happens in the movie is tied to that fact. To say that Donald's a creation of mine is something I don't want to do.”22

19 As discussed in section 2.2, Wagner’s terminology is used in this paper to reference to different kinds of adaptations. He distinguishes between transposition, commentary and analogy in order of their levels of correspondence to the source material (Wagner 1975:219ff). 20 There is no generally applicable definition of an ‘independently shot’ movie. However, for the purposes of this paper, the term ‘independent’ should be understood as referring to any movie which was (partially) privately funded or is not associated with one of the big Hollywood (as an institution, not a location) film studios but was instead produced by a small, lesser known studio and/or on a substantially smaller than average budget. 21 The Writer’s Guild of America officially allowed Donald to be credited as the co-writer of Adaptation and as such, he was also nominated for an Academy Award in the category “Best Adapted Screenplay” in 2003, along with Charlie Kaufman. 22 Topel, Fred. “An Unorthodox ADAPTATION: Deciphering Charlie Kaufman”. [Online] http://www.screenwritersutopia.com/article/d1471d19 [2015, October 14]

Donald is certainly a very important aspect in the movie, since he in many ways represents mainstream Hollywood filmmaking. The relationship between Charlie and Donald can therefore also be seen as a manifestation of the relationship between independent and mainstream filmmaking. Generally, although there are also notable examples to the contrary, the decision to make a more mainstream film is also closely linked to higher box-office success. Where independently shot movies are often more intellectual, more traditional films usually appeal to a broader market. This is also an issue which is thematized at various points in the film, like, for example, in the following scene where Donald tells Charlie about his script with which the latter is less than impressed.

DONALD You wanna hear my pitch?

KAUFMAN Go away, goddamn it!

DONALD (beat, lost) You know, I’m just trying to do something...

Kaufman squints at his brother, sits up, waits.

DONALD (CONT’D) ...Hey hanks a lot, buddy. Cool... Okay, there’s this serial killer, right. [..] And he’s being hunted by a cop. And he’s taunting the cop, right? He’s already holding her hostage in his creepy basement. So the cop gets obsessed with figuring out her identity and in the process falls in love with her. Even though he’s never even met her. She becomes like the unattainable. Like the Holy Grail.

KAUFMAN It’s a little obvious, don’t you think?

DONALD Okay, but here’s the twist. We find out that the killer really suffers from multiple personality disorder. Right? [...] See, he’s actually really the cop and the girl. All of them are him! Isn’t that fucked up?!

KAUFMAN The only idea more overused than serial killers is multiple personality. On top of that, you explore the notion that cop and criminal are really two aspects of the same person. See every cop movie ever made for other examples of this. (Adaptation. The Shooting Script. 2002: 30f)

Donald’s screenplay which embodies Hollywood popularism and is filled with cliché upon cliché of its associated genre (action thriller) turns out to be highly successful despite Charlie criticizing it for being very generic. Meanwhile Charlie has difficulties in completing his screenplay which represents a more innovative and individualistic approach to screenwriting. The irony here is, of course, the fact that what Charlie describes as an ‘overused’ idea, is one of the major plot points in Adaptation and thus, in the brothers’ final screenplay. Because Charlie and Donald not only represent different approaches to screenwriting but are also ‘two aspects of the same person’, namely the real Charlie Kaufman.

Accordingly, it is probably the more commercial of those two aspects which opted to include the fictional Donald in the screenplay, which means that

Donald is the actual ouroboros, having practically created himself. Thus, also Donald’s screenplay, “The Three”, is one of Adaptation’s many meta-elements mirroring certain aspects of the film.

The similarities to “The Three” as well as the sensationalist turn the plot of Adaptation takes towards the end of the film may in part be an admission to the fact that traditional and commerce-oriented screenwriting is not entirely without value. However, significantly, Kaufman has also included in the film a nod to his most successful work up to that point, Being John Malkovich, the set of which we see him on at the beginning of the movie. One of the reasons for including it might have been to present a counter-argument to the previous point, by also reminding the viewers that more intellectual and unconventional films can be just as successful.

Further, the scene set behind the scenes of Being John Malkovich could also be seen as commenting on another aspect of the Hollywood film industry. As described previously, Charlie Kaufman is introduced along with other members of the cast and crew. He is, however, told that he is in the shot and subsequently

41 asked to leave the set, which might be an allusion to the fact that screenwriters generally are not seen as equally important to actors or directors, who are (made) more ‘visible’ to the public. Evidence of this fact is, for example, the common practice of crediting a film to its director and not its writer when quoting it in a research paper. In light of this, Kaufman’s decision to put himself into his script could be seen as an attempt to make himself more visible as the creator of the film.

As Robert McKee, who is also fictionalized in Adaptation, notes, there is a further relation to be considered between the two films, as he describes Adaptation as a “thematic sequel to Being John Malkovich” (Adaptation. The Shooting Script.

2002: 131). In Malkovich, characters suffer a claustrophobia of identity. Suffocating in their own skins, weary of an ineffable emptiness, they want to transform. […] In Adaptation, Kaufman abandoned the whimsy of transformation to confront suffering at its source - the war within. He shifted the setting from an alienated social landscape to an innerscape he knows only too well, his own mind.

This introspective function to the use of metareferential techniques in his storytelling seems common to Kaufman’s work, as will become even more apparent in the analysis of both Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York, where he turns his analysis on the inner workings of interpersonal human relationships and, rather ambitiously, society as a whole.

4. Metareference in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

4.1. A Short Synopsis of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Clementine Kruczynski (played by Kate Winslet) and Joel Barish (played by Jim Carrey) find themselves increasingly bored and confined in their relationship, when Clementine decides to have her memories of Joel erased. This is made possible by a piece of technology invented by Dr. Mierzwiak (played by Tom Wilkinson) which is designed to wipe the unwanted memories, one by one, from the subject’s mind while they are asleep. By accident, Joel discovers Clementine’s deed and decides to have his own memories of her erased as well. While he is undergoing the procedure, however, Joel realizes that he does not really want to forget his ex-girlfriend and decides to fight against the process in order to keep his memories. Ultimately, Joel fails to resist the erasure and forgets Clementine, but the two of them are brought together again by fate or perhaps their residual, subconscious memories leading them back to the place where they first met. However, Joel’s and Clementine’s relatively straightforward story is not told in chronological order, but instead has a circular structure starting the morning after Joel has his memories erased and just before he meets Clementine for the second time. Then, there is a time jump to what we as the viewers assume is the future and to Clementine’s and Joel’s break-up. We witness the erasure of Joel’s memories in reverse chronology only to realize that when it is finished, the action is back where it started at the beginning of the movie.

Intercut with Clementine’s and Joel’s story, there is another storyline following Dr. Mierzwiak and his employees which is told in chronological order. It focuses, on the one hand, on Patrick (Elijah Wood), one of the erasure technicians, who

43 has fallen for Clementine and begun a relationship with her after her memories were erased and on the other hand, on Mary (Kirsten Dunst), who is Dr. Mierzwiak’s assistant. Mary has fallen in love with the married doctor and wants to start an affair with him, when she finds out that the two of them already had an affair which ended up in Mary having her memories erased as well. The pain of this discovery leads her to notifying all of Dr. Mierzwiak’s clients of the procedure they had done, including Joel and Clementine, who at the end of the film are left wondering whether their relationship is perhaps doomed to repeat itself all over again.

4.2. The (Metareferential) Structure of ESSM

At its base, the structure of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is actually the most straightforward of the three analyzed films. It is, however, accompanied by a cyclical chronology and nonlinear storytelling, which make it appear more complicated. In the diagram below, I have tried to illustrate both the film’s ontological structure as well as its chronology.

image 11: Diagram of the ontological and chronological structure of ESSM

As already discussed in the synopsis of the film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind features two storylines, the second of which serves as a mirror to the main story centered on the protagonists, Clementine and Joel, in its structure as well as its subject matter. Both are problematic love stories which repeat themselves after one or both parties have their memories erased. Thus, they share a cyclical structure, which is, however, directly visually represented only in the case of the main storyline and instead present only by inference in the second one.

The point marked ‘film start’ is where the film begins, the morning after Joel has his memories of Clementine erased. From there, the story progresses in a linear manner for about seventeen minutes, in which the two main protagonists meet

(for the second time) and spend a day and the following night together. Then, the film cuts back to the evening before Joel’s memory erasure (point marked ‘story start’), after which Joel’s memories of Clementine are related in reverse chronological order as they are being erased, as symbolized by the counter- clockwise black line. The memories are represented in the diagram by the colored dotted circles which are supposed to represent their ontological status as hypodiegetic levels, with the dotted lines signifying the permeability of their borders. As Joel fights against the erasure of his memories, numerous epistemological and ontological metaleptic transgressions occur between the memories as well as between the hypodiegetic and diegetic levels. These occurrences will, however, be analyzed in greater detail in the scene analysis section.

When the last, or in terms of chronology the first, memory of Clementine has been erased, the storyline becomes linear again and resumes at the point from which the film originally started and continues in this way until the ending of the movie. It is important to note here, that the correct order of the film’s chronology is far from apparent in the first viewing. Further, when Joel’s erasing

45 procedure starts, it is not clear that this is what he is doing. Thus, the fact that the film’s diegesis features two distinct ontological levels is not immediately established. In fact, the moment the distinct levels become apparent to the viewer is also the moment of metalepsis in which the hypodiegetic Joel realizes his fictionality. Although the viewers do find out about Clementine’s erasure in one of the first memories shown, due a common tendency to naturalize metareferential and nonchronologic storytelling, as well as due to the more traditional cinematic convention of representing past events through flashbacks23, the storyline will likely be presumed to be linear until proven otherwise. After the initial metalepsis, the ontological status of the intradiegetic Joel’s memories (as opposed to extradiegetic flashbacks) and thus the film’s increased narrative complexity is foregrounded more clearly through various cinematographic devices, such as “expressionistic lighting, out-of-focus shots and sonic distortions” (Campora 2009: 123f).

The above mentioned ‘increased narrative complexity’ does, however, not actually correspond to an increased ontological or structural complexity. While the film is certainly perceived as quite complex to follow due to its nonlinear chronology, its structure is a quite simple and commonly used one across narrative media. Fundamentally, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a frame tale with both the opening and end frames being present, although the structure in general and the opening frame in particular are perhaps not recognized as such until the film’s ending. Further, and quite interestingly, what complicate the viewing experience are the nonchronologic and nonlinear storytelling as well as (to some extent) the resulting lacunae or gaps in meaning but not, as might be expected, the frequently employed metareferential devices.

23 While flashbacks also constitute separate diegetic levels, they “are temporally and/or spatially distinct but ontologically similar“ (Campora 2009:124) and are thus not inherently metareferential but usually a narrative and cinematographic device employed to provide background information relating to the main storyline in a non-expositional manner.

On the contrary, metareference is actually used to close the emerging gaps extradiegetically (i.e. in the viewers’ perception) and intradiegetically, as a way of trying to prevent them from occurring in the first place (i.e. Joel’s metaleptic struggle to keep his memories). Both of these functions will, of course, be discussed in more detail later. In the following subchapter, however, the very prominent use of the (literary) concept of the ‘lacuna’ will be briefly analyzed, as it provides vital insights for the film’s further interpretation.

4.3. Metareferential Lacunae

Kim Edwards writes in an essay on the film that “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [...] aligns itself overtly with the literary (2008: 119)” and discusses the film’s use of the literary term of the ‘lacuna’, which Dr. Mierzwiak’s memory erasing company (Lacuna Inc.) is quite aptly named after. In general, the term lacuna can be used in more than one sense, “In anatomy, lacunae are the gaps or cavities between the tissues of an organism, including those created in the brain as a result of neurological damage. In literary scholarship, a lacuna is a hiatus [in a] text, while the Latin root ‘lacus’ simply means ‘lake’” (Edwards 2008: 121). It seems quite clear that Charlie Kaufman is probably aware of the term’s full spectrum of meaning, since all of them are reflected in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to some extent. Indeed, the film is rife image 12 with blanks and absences on every level, from a relatively subtle allusion in its title to the visual representation of blank and empty spaces as well as the erasure of thoughts

47 and memories. Most strikingly, however, one image (see image 12 above) in particular provides a perfect example of lacunae as a trope in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In one memory shown during the erasure, a process which is explicitly likened to minor brain damage by the doctor, Joel and Clementine are lying together on a frozen lake, looking towards the sky. Next to them, a large crack in the ice is clearly visible, mirroring the emerging gaps in Joel’s memory. Thus, all above mentioned meanings of the term ‘lacuna’ are combined in this single image, which is shown multiple times in the film and occurs on the diegetic as well as the hypodiegetic level (as the protagonists are shown visiting the frozen lake in Joel’s memories as well as when the two meet for the second time). Together with the choice of the memory erasing company’s name, the movie title and the fact that this image was also chosen for the film poster, viewers should thus be left in no doubt that lacunae or blanks are a major or perhaps even the main theme in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

On the story level, the film also clearly deals with lacunae in the form of absence and loss, as the central plot of the film is that of a couple erasing each other from their memories. These absences are then visually expressed at various points in the film, thus making them visible as iconic blanks. Large parts of the story are set in winter and as such, the landscape is often sparse and entirely covered in snow which sometimes renders it an almost completely white blank space. When the film follows Joel on the diegetic level, the color palette of his surroundings largely consists of white, gray and black, except when he is with Clementine, who is often the only colorful element in a shot (see images 13 to 15 below).

Most noticeably, of course, lacunae are (predominantly) visually represented on the hypodiegetic level. In the memories of which this level consists, objects and

48 people frequently disappear into nothingness or are swallowed by encroaching blackness around the two main protagonists and also Clementine flickers in and out of existence on multiple occasions. Even as Joel continues to resist the progressing erasure, the landscape around him becomes ever sparser and is often reduced to an almost blank space (see images 16 to 18 below).

image 13 image 14 image 15

image 16 image 17 image 18

Although the shots are (except for the very last one) never completely empty, they can be classified as visual blanks. For, since it is marketed to a general audience, even an atypical film like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind must be character-driven to a certain extent. Therefore, Joel (and in some cases Clementine) must be present in the shot in order to tell the desired story, especially since Joel acts as the focalizer on both ontological levels. However, it is not quite clear whether these blanks are supplemented or non-supplemented. When the space around the character is uniform, it could be classified as a non- supplemented blank. But as this is never completely the case, the characters

(and sometimes isolated objects) present in the shot could be seen as elements which highlight the absence, making the blank a supplemented one similar to missing text indicated by asterisks in literature.

Differentiating between the discourse and the story level in film is not always straightforward and some elements might even belong to both levels, depending on the perspective from which they are analyzed. Typical examples of discursive elements in film are framing, cutting, cinematography (camera work and visual realization including lighting and color palette), music and sound, production and costume design, make-up etc. Thus, the color scheme of the film, while also being a story element, is certainly also part of the discourse. As described above, one of the color palettes used in the film consists of white, black and hues of grey with all other colors slightly desaturated (with the exception of colors worn by Clementine). This palette is used for the scenes belonging to the diegetic level.

In addition to marking the absence of memories, the color palette also signifies loneliness, isolation and the absence of meaning. On the story level, this is then mirrored by Joel’s lacking sense of purpose and his inexplicable urge to drive to Montauk, as well as Clementine’s feeling that something is not right (“Nothing makes any sense!” (Eternal Sunshine. Film. 49: 54)24). Further, the characters’ unease is in turn conveyed and also projected unto the viewers by another discursive element, namely the absence of coherence, i.e. the film’s fragmented structure and non-chronological storytelling.

This projection of the character’s emotions onto the viewer is a crucial element in achieving suture, which is the creation of identification and aesthetic illusion in the viewers (cf. Silverman 2000: 80). This effect is also achieved through several further discursive blanks, distorted sound, grainy/blurred/discolored picture (see images 19 to 21 below) and incongruous picture and sound, which are used when Joel first becomes aware of the erasure process. These devices

24 The numbers in parenthesis after quotations from a film always refer to the point in the film at which the quotation starts. Particularly for the interpretation of ESSM, both the film and the shooting script were used, since they greatly differ in many crucial scenes.

50 which would normally probably destroy the viewers’ aesthetic illusion, in this case heighten it, since we are led to identify with the equally confused characters. This hints, again, at Kaufman’s unconventional use of certain (metareferential) devices as far as their effects and functions are concerned.

Although these aforementioned discursive devices might not appear to be blanks, I would argue that they are supplemented visual blanks, again comparable to e.g. a string of asterisks used in literature to mark missing text. The reason for this assumption lies in the process of achieving their intentioned effects. Similar to literature, where the writer of a text presumably knows the content of the portion of text substituted by asterisks, or has even written and then removed it, the filmmakers must record the scenes and sound track in an ordinary way before later altering them. Therefore, the normal sounds and pictures were present at one stage in the creation of the film but were removed or distorted in the film’s post-production. Even viewers who are not aware of such details know how the scenes are “supposed” to look and are aware that the picture or sound quality was deliberately altered and thus, their attention is drawn to these ‘missing’ elements.

image 19 image 20 image 21

The pervasiveness of absence as a theme in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless

Mind is already apparent in the film’s title. It is a direct quotation taken from Alexander Pope’s poem “Eloisa to Abelard” (1717) which is based on a tragic

51 love story from the twelfth century25. It is also intermedially referenced in the film’s diegesis when Mary, Dr. Mierzwiak’s assistant, quotes from it, wrongly identifying the author as ‘Pope Alexander’:

“How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot The world forgetting, by the world forgot; Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, Each prayer accepted, and each wish resign’d;” (Eternal Sunshine. Film 1:17:14)

According to Kim Edwards (2008: 119), “it is significant that Mary gets the poet’s name back to front, for she is also mistaken in her understanding of the quotation”. She sees it as a very positive quotation and feels it is ‘appropriate’ to Joel’s situation, believing that the procedure enables him to have a fresh start and happier life. However, if one takes a closer look at the quotation and the poem it is taken from, it quickly becomes clear that just the opposite is the case. In fact, the image of ‘eternal sunshine’ alone, in itself alludes to various absences which also mark the characters’ lives. It entails an absence of change, of night (calm, sleep, dreams) and would eventually result in a desert, equating the absence (or almost non-existence) of life – an altogether harsh and unkindly image. Further, according to Kim Edwards (see ibid), the image also alludes to John Locke’s concept of ‘tabula rasa’, according to which all people are born with a blank mind and without any knowledge which is only built up throughout life.26 Locke’s concept is also alluded to on the diegetic level, significantly, again by Mary, whose story (i.e. her circular love story with Dr. Mierzwiak discussed in section 4.2) serves as a mirror to the protagonists’.

MARY […] It’s beautiful. You look at a baby and it’s so fresh, so clean, so free. Adults… they’re like this mess of anger and phobias and sadness … hoplessness. (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The Shooting Script. 2004: 71)

25 Wikipedia (2013). “Eloisa to Abelard”. Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia. [Online]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloisa_to_Abelard [2015, October 5]. 26 Wikipedia (2013). “Tabula rasa”. Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia. [Online]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa [2015, October 30].

One of the film’s gaps which remain unresolved is the open ending to Joel’s and Clementine’s love story. This is due to a very carefully crafted and balanced last scene allowing the viewer to hope for a happy ending while suspecting the opposite. This scene will, however, be among those analyzed more closely in the following chapter.

The blanks and absences represented in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are metareferential only to a certain extent in that they are variously employed as meta-elements or otherwise represented in close connection with or as the consequence of metareferential devices. The lacunae in the film are often also mises-en-abyme, which mirror gaps of meaning on another ontological level. Further, some of the film’s visual supplemented blanks can simultaneously be classified as metalepses, as will be discussed in the following sections. Lastly, there is the film’s hypodiegetic level which is in the process of being erased, i.e. of becoming a large and unified blank, a fact which is, in turn, mirrored by the occurrence of an Iserian Leerstelle on the diegetic level. All of these instances of metareference will be discussed in more detail in the following scene analysis section.

4.4. Scene Analyses

4.4.1. After the Erasure - the Beginning and the Ending

In keeping with its thematization of absence, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind already starts with a pause. After the logo and jingle of the production company, there is complete silence and a black screen is shown for approximately 6 seconds, which is actually a relatively long time without either

53 picture or sound for a mainstream film.27 Here, also the film’s non-chronological and multi-layered ontological structure might already be alluded to (significantly, through an absence as well), since the opening credits are only shown about 17 minutes after the start, whereas they would normally be seen either before or during the first scenes.

After the initial pause, the first shot slowly fades in from the black screen. It is an extreme close-up28 of Joel’s head which rests, eyes closed, on a white pillow, a blank space (see image 22 below). There is also still silence, but as Joel slowly opens his eyes, a few short banging sounds can be heard. Then there is a cut to the next shot, which is a close-up of Joel’s bedroom window seen from his perspective through which the outlines of a winter landscape against a white sky are just discernible, making the window another virtually blank space. At the beginning of this shot, the film’s main musical theme, composed specifically by Jon Brion, sets in. It is a relatively calm piano composition with very little variation and change, which continues to play quietly over the next few scenes (for approx. 3 minutes) and complements Joel’s emotions, which he relates via an expositional voice over, which is later revealed to be a diary entry. As he slowly gets out of bed, his room, which is also very bare and colorless, is shown in an ever wider angle (see image 23 below). In the next scene, Joel is shown making his way to Montauk accompanied by a voice over which states:

JOEL (V.O.) Random thoughts on Valentine’s Day 2004. The day is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap. I ditched work today. Took a train out to

Montauk. I’m not an impulsive person. [...]” (Eternal Sunshine. Film. 01:35)

27 The average time seems to be approximately 3 seconds, according to my own non-representative sample of 30 Hollywood films. 28 The majority of shots fall into one of six categories: the extreme long shot, the long shot, the full shot, the medium shot, the close-up and the extreme close-up (see Giannetti 1990:8). There can, however, be variations of these shots and terminological differences between various reference works tend to occur.

The scene cuts to Joel walking along on an equally white and deserted beach in Montauk and afterwards to a close-up of a notebook he is holding, roughly from his point of view. We realize it is a diary he is about to write in, as the pen in his hand is hovering over the blank white page on the right. As he begins, the voiceover sets in again, “[...] Pages ripped out. Don’t remember doing that. It appears this is my first entry in two years.” (Eternal Sunshine. Film. 02:38). The scene changes again to Joel walking on the beach and we see Clementine for the first time, first from a great distance (see image 13 in the previous section), then in a long shot, which zooms in to a full body shot. Joel looks at her for a short moment and then looks away again and continues to walk along the beach.

image 22 image 23 image 24

This first encounter is followed by a few short scenes of the pair running into each other at various places with Clementine wanting to make contact but Joel only barely reacting in a shy manner. On the train back to New York, however, Clementine finally manages to start a conversation with Joel. As the train rolls through a white winter landscape, its windows become blank spaces similar to

Joel’s bedroom window. The conversation between the two characters is filmed in a variation of the shot/reverse shot formation29, whereby the two perspectives are visually separated. When we see Joel’s (rough) point of view, the shot is almost an entirely blank space except for the two characters (see

29 A cutting technique whereby the viewer, through the gaze of the camera, is variously made to assume the position of two or more subjects, a device which facilitates identification (see Silverman 2000:77). In the above example, the camera is positioned slightly to one side of the character who is, contrary to the convention of the technique, still visible in the shot.

55 image 14 in the previous section), while it is more colorful from Clementine’s point of view (see image 24 above).

Later on the same day, Joel and Clementine are in her apartment, where Joel apologizes for being a rather boring conversation partner with a line of dialogue in which, again, some iconic semantic blanks can be observed which mirror (or, in terms of the film’s timeline, rather “foreshadow”) the erasure of Joel’s memories.

JOEL My life just isn’t that interesting. I go to work. I come home. [...] You should read my journal. There’s ... (pause) I mean it’s just (short pause) blank.” (Eternal Sunshine 11:16).

They later travel to the frozen lake where we can observe the visual representations of blanks discussed previously. When they return to Clementine’s apartment the next morning, Clementine asks to stay at Joel’s apartment, and he waits in the car while she goes inside to get her toothbrush. As Joel waits, a man (later, of course revealed to be Patrick) knocks on the car window.

MAN Can I help you? JOEL What do you mean? [...] MAN What are you doing here? JOEL I’m not sure what you’re asking me. MAN Ok. Thanks. (leaves) (Eternal Sunshine 17:06)

At this point, the conversation makes as much sense to the viewer as it does to Joel and as he looks confused, the picture slowly fades to black. When it fades in again about two seconds later, we see Joel in his car once more. He is crying, and it is clear that some time lies between the two scenes (likely, the viewers will presume this scene takes place later, while it actually shows Joel on the night before the erasure of his memories). Here, the opening credits are shown, which

56 might be a subtle clue that the chronology of this and the preceding scenes is not linear. When Joel arrives at his apartment, a neighbor asks about Clementine and whether the two of them have plans for Valentine’s Day the following day.

The transition between these two scenes can be classified as an Iserian Leerstelle (see Iser 1975: 235ff) or gap in meaning. In most cases, those semantic gaps are “not iconic, but strategic devices that serve mainly to activate reader participation in the construction of meaning” (Wolf 2005: 124). However, when they appear in connection with iconic blanks, they can be highly meaningful. From the neighbor’s questions, the implied viewer will most likely assume that at least a year has passed since the day shown in the first scenes (the date of which was clearly given as “Valentine’s Day, 2004”), since the default viewer expectation to this sort of film is a linear chronology and no substantial indications to the contrary were given. But, in combination with the many visual blanks represented and other unexplained gaps (e.g. the pages ripped out from the diary), some viewers might be able to piece together the actual sequence of the scenes, even before they are shown again towards the end of the film.

After the erasure process has been completed, the scene of Joel waking up in his apartment is shown again, whereby the gap in meaning is ultimately filled and the film’s chronology revealed, for all viewers must now realize that the initial scenes of the film did not show Joel’s and Clementine’s first meeting but their second one instead. However, not everything is resolved, since the numerous visual blanks described above are, of course, still present, a fact which is reemphasized by the shortened version of the beginning (Joel waking up and taking the train to Montauk as well as the scene in Joel’s car just before the Leerstelle) now shown again. After Joel’s conversation with the man, who we now know is Patrick, the Lacuna technician who helped erase Joel’s memory, Clementine returns from her apartment, where she has, among other things,

57 collected her mail. She has received a letter from Lacuna, Inc. sent by Dr. Mierzwiak’s assistant Mary, who has realized that the erasure is morally questionable and sent all of the company’s files back to the respective patients. The letter also includes a tape recording of the memories Clementine wished to erase. She puts it into the tape deck and together, the two characters listen to it:

CLEMENTINE (record) My name is Clementine Kruczynski. I’m here to erase Joel Barish JOEL What is that? CLEMENTINE “I don’t know CLEMENTINE (record) He is boring. Is that enough reason to erase someone? (Eternal Sunshine. Film. 1:37:34)

Here, the gaps in the characters’ own memory are highlighted again, before they are, at least partially, bridged by their taped statements. Joel is hurt by Clementine’s words and asks her to get out of the car, which she does. Only a little while later, however, Clementine drives to Joel’s apartment, where he is shown listening to his own record. The characters’ fragmented memories are again also visually underlined, as they are frequently shown against a white and sparse or blank background (see images 25 and 26 below). Clementine is overwhelmed by the strangeness of the situation and wants to leave, but Joel follows her into the hallway and begs her to wait:

JOEL Wait! CLEMENTINE (turns towards him, pauses) Why? […] JOEL Just wait. I don’t know. I just want you to wait for ... just a ... while. (Long pause. They look at each other. Joel walks over to Clementine.) CLEMENTINE Okay. JOEL Really? CLEMENTINE I’m not a concept, Joel. [...] I’m not perfect. JOEL I can’t think of anything I don’t like about you right now.

CLEMENTINE But you will. [...] And I’ll get bored with you and feel trapped [...] JOEL Okay. (Pause) CLEMENTINE Okay. (Eternal Sunshine. Film. 1:42:23)

image 25 image 26 image 27

After this, there is a cut to the very last scene of the film (see image 27 above). It is also one that has been shown before, namely during the memory erasure. The couple can be seen running together on the beach in Montauk. While the song “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime” plays on the soundtrack, the scene flickers and partially repeats for a few times before slowly fading to a completely white screen. According to Kim Edwards, this scene is “ambiguous [...] and we cannot be sure if we are seeing a clean slate for the future or another erasure of the past. [W]e are unable to predict whether Joel and Clem have learnt from their mistakes [...], or whether their fate is to keep reliving the experience of meeting and parting” (Edwards 2008: 123f). The ending is indeed ambiguous, as there are clues to suggest both possibilities. While the above mentioned song could allude to a happier ending, the very last white screen suddenly smashes to black30 and there is a short (2 seconds) pause before the credits start rolling, indicating the possibility that the protagonists’ story might be fated to repeat itself all over again.

30 Unknown (2013). „Smash to Black“ TV Tropes by TV Tropes Foundation, LLC. [Online]. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SmashToBlack [2015, October 30]

As we can see, the film’s frame story, narratively and cinematographically, largely adheres to conventional patterns and methods. While many gaps in meaning are displayed, they are eventually filled and despite some deviations from linear and strictly chronological storytelling, “a realistic diegetic world is established and maintained through a naturalistic mise-en-scène and continuity editing31 techniques. Space and causality are stable and follow the conventions of the classical style.” (Campora 2009: 123) Some metareferential devices can nevertheless be observed on this level. These will, however, be discussed in the following subsection in conjunction with the events they motivate (or are motivated by) on the hypodiegetic level.

4.4.2. Trying to Resist the Erasure

In contrast to the visual representation of blank space seen after the erasure is complete, the scenes depicting the memory erasure itself predominantly rely on fragmentation and metareferential devices to show the (incipient) absence and disappearance of memory. Since the erasure of Joel’s memories constitutes the main plot sequence of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the analysis in this section will only focus on a selection of relevant aspects.

As established in section 4.1., the hypodiegetic level mainly follows a retrogressive chronology. As such, the first memories shown are Joel’s most recent ones. These memories are predominantly presented in a realistic style and the chronology is at this stage linear and progressive. This was probably done mainly for the sake of understandability, as they depict the story of Joel’s decision to erase his memories of Clementine upon finding out that she has had this procedure done herself. These scenes are also intercut with scenes from the diegetic level on which the unconscious Joel is shown during the erasing

31 meaning that the sequence of the scenes is generally a logical one

60 procedure. These cuts are accompanied by what Matthew Campora describes as “conventional sound bridges” (2009: 126), which traditionally serve to sequentially connect two multiple shots (cf. ibid). This use of a traditional connecting element is also one of the reasons why these scenes might wrongly be assumed to be flashbacks in the first viewing, as discussed previously.

However, from an intradiegetic perspective, not all goes to plan on the diegetic level. The voltage on the erasure device is set incorrectly, which causes various disturbances that influence the sound on the hypodiegetic level. These disturbances, which consists of sound fragments from the diegetic level that are audible on the hypodiegetic level, are termed ‘sonic metalepses’ by Campora, who argues that they differ from the conventional sound bridges delineated above in that they directly affect the action on the hypodiegetic level (cf. 2009: 126f). Indeed, what renders these sonic disturbances metaleptic is the hypodiegetic Joel’s awareness of them and his ensuing realization that he is, paradoxically, in two places at once and that his memories are in the process of being erased. Thus, as opposed to the viewer’s immersion in the film being affected, we might say that it is Joel’s aesthetic illusion that is undermined as the fictionality of the memories is foregrounded. Campora describes this metalepsis as rhetorical (cf. 2009: 127). I would, however, argue that this is an incorrect classification, since the transgression here is far more than merely an imagined one. Instead, the metalepsis seems to be an epistemological one (a category missing in Campora’s terminology, as he only distinguishes between rhetorical and ontological metalepses), due to the fact that the hypodiegetic Joel, in a sense, becomes aware that he is (not strictly fictional but) a figment of his own imagination, a past version of himself captured inside a memory. The transgression is, of course, also not ontological, since it is clearly established that the diegetic Joel remains unconscious in bed, thus making a physical transgression impossible.

Thus, Joel’s awareness of this quasi-fictionality is simultaneously the result of an epistemological metaleptic transgression and the catalyst for the further destabilization of the ontological borders. The initial sonic metalepsis seemingly weakens the internal ontological structure of the hypodiegetic level, resulting in the blurring of the boundaries between the individual (ontologically similar) levels (i.e. the individual memories). As the technicians on the diegetic level make adjustments to the voltage, the general stability of this individual memory is impaired. In addition to a decreased picture quality (see images 19 to 21), the scenes suddenly start to repeat themselves and fast-forward or overlap. Further, also the general sound and image quality is affected. As discussed in section 4.3., I would like to classify these ensuing disturbances as supplemented visual and sonic iconic blanks, which are, however, also quasi-metaleptic transgressions, since the physical act of trying to adjust the erasure apparatus on the diegetic level directly affects the appearance and, more importantly, Joel’s perception of the hypodiegetic level.

The end of this first series of visual and sonic metalepses32 simultaneously marks the transition to Joel’s actual memories of Clementine. Already in the first of these recollections, Clementine suddenly disappears and reappears, as the process of erasure is presented to the viewers. People and objects around Joel disappear as the scenes, most of which are already lit in low key (i.e. in high contrast), grow continuously darker until everything around Joel is completely black, at which point the erasure is complete. Further, there are often “subtle nondiegetic sound effects to enhance the sense of erasure. As a memory is being eliminated, we hear either tape rewinding at high speed, or a pyrotechnic fizzle as it disappears.” (Batcho 2007: 3). In contrast to the previous sonic

32 The hypodiegetic Joel continues to hear the technicians’ conversation taking place on the diegetic level from time to time in a similar fashion. This eventually allows him to piece together that Patrick has used his (Joel’s) record of his memories to get close to Clementine, further motivating him to fight against the erasure.

62 metalepses, these are purely extradiegetic sounds which “exist simply for the audience” (ibid) and mark the absences created by the erasure.

As the process continues, fragmentation in the individual memories and the overall chronology occurs, due to Joel’s awareness of the erasure and his determination to stop it. Intradiegetically, this desire is motivated by Joel’s love for Clementine as well as by his jealousy of Patrick the Lacuna technician who is now Clementine’s boyfriend (Joel’s awareness of this latter fact is created by further sonic metalepses of conversation fragments between the erasure technicians). As he fights the erasure, Joel also makes Clementine aware of what is happening. Her awareness, however, does not constitute a metalepsis, since she is purely hypodiegetic and also her consciousness is clearly independent from that of the diegetic Clementine. Paradoxically though, the diegetic Clementine does seem to be affected by Joel’s erasure at times, as indicated by her growing nervousness and sense of calamity and her sudden inexplicable desire to visit the frozen lake with Patrick.

PATRICK Oh, baby, what’s going on? CLEMENTINE I don’t know. I’m lost. I’m scared. I feel like I’m disappearing. I’m getting old and nothing makes any sense to me. […] Come up to Boston with me? […] Now! I have to go now. I have to see the frozen Charles! Now! Tonight! (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The Shooting Script. 2004: 59)

I would like to term this paradoxical occurrence a retrograde epistemological metalepsis; epistemological, because even though Clementine does not become aware of her fictionality, part of the hypodiegetic Clementine’s awareness seems to transgress to the diegetic level, directly influencing the diegetic Clementine’s thoughts and actions. In light of this, the metalepsis might also be classified as borderline ontological. However, the transgression of this small particle of consciousness seems altogether too insubstantial to warrant the assumption of an actual physical transgression. Further, I am adding the qualifier ‘retrograde’,

63 because the hierarchical direction of the transgression runs counter to what would be expected in a traditional epistemological metalepsis.

A similar instance of metalepsis can be observed when the hypodiegetic Joel actively tries to influence his diegetic self by concentrating hard and closing his eyes on the hypodiegetic level, which then actually results in the ‘real’ Joel opening his eyes on the diegetic level and allows him to briefly regain consciousness there. As Joel thus drifts in and out of consciousness on the diegetic level, his consciousness metaleptically transgresses to and from the hypodiegetic level. In itself, of course, an occurrence where a character falls asleep and then finds himself in his dreams is not in any way metareferential. In this case, however, (the hypodiegetic) Joel’s awareness of what is happening renders this transgression metaleptic. As opposed to the previous similar instance, I would argue, that this one is a retrograde ontological metalepsis, since the hypodiegetic Joel, who is already aware of his ontological status, manages to shift his entire consciousness to the diegetic level, if only for a brief moment, making this transgression somehow more substantial than an epistemological one.

As Joel thus tries to keep Clementine from being erased, the pair decides that the best way to accomplish this would be to ‘hide’ Clementine deep inside Joel’s memories. This results in their metaleptic transgression into older memories in which Clementine did not originally appear. In contrast to the various metalepses described above, however, these transgressions seem to be of a less disruptive nature. This is due, on the one hand, to their repeated occurrence weakening their impact and, on the other hand, to the similar ontological status of the levels between which these transgressions occur. Of course, as the various memories thus rapidly interchange in a non-linear way, many gaps in meaning occur. These are, however, not meaningful blanks but mainly fulfill the function

64 of engaging the viewers as well as providing entertainment and maintaining tension. Further, as objects constantly disappear or disintegrate into nothingness, they leave non-supplemented visual iconic blanks, an effect which is heightened by the immediately visible contrast between presence and absence. Thus, the interplay of meta-elements and blanks, both of which have a strong potential of interrupting aesthetic illusion and story progression when represented on their own, curiously serves to heighten aesthetic illusion for the viewers (by achieving suture) as well as to enable the plot to move forward intradiegetically. The emerging blanks continuously instill in the protagonists the desire to act, while the meta-elements or their direct results (i.e. the weakening of the ontological borders) create the possibility for them to act.

A quite spectacular instance of disintegration and a final instance of metalepsis occur in the very last memory to be erased, in which Joel and Clementine break into an empty vacation home near the beach in Montauk. As the couple plays out this last memory and regrets Joel’s impending lack of their shared memories, the house is slowly swallowed by darkness and parts of its roof and façade start to crumble and crash to the ground, symbolizing the disintegration of Joel’s mind during the erasure. With the house slowly brought down by a deluge of water from the ocean, the last image of Clementine and Joel begins to blur as they say their good-byes. As the scene eventually fades, Clementine whispers to Joel, “Meet me in Montauk.” (Eternal Sunshine 1:30:52). The erasure draws to a close with Joel seeing some residual memories slowly fading into blackness, before a short beeping sound on the diegetic level announces that all memories have been erased. Clementine’s last hypodiegetic utterance, however, is again a retrograde epistemological metalepsis, since her words are thus implanted so deep in both protagonists’ minds that they are driven to actually meet in Montauk on the diegetic level the very next day.

4.5. Functions of Metareference in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

One function of the use of metareference in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind might be the exploration of the possibility of representing various elements stemming from the tradition of literary theory in film. Especially in light of the fact that this adaptation of literary concepts and ideas to a filmic context is a topic frequently addressed by Charlie Kaufman in his screenplays, this assumption seems obvious. In Adaptation, the general process of reworking a novel into a film is the main topic, while Synecdoche, New York explores the concept of the simulacrum and possibilities of multi-level storytelling. These examples suggest that in the present film, various forms of metareference as well as lacunae might also have been used for their own sake, with perhaps the literary concept of the lacuna as Kaufman’s main point of focus in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Also Kim Edwards calls Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind a film which “aligns itself overtly with the literary.” (2008: 119). Indeed, small nods to the literary tradition in general and, of course, lacunae in particular can be found at many points in the film, with the choice of movie title establishing the connection between the two media already from the beginning, since it constitutes an intertextual and intermedial reference to a poem by Alexander Pope. This foundation is then built upon by the introduction of Clementine as a character who works at the bookshop Barnes & Noble and proclaims to be “an open book” (Eternal Sunshine 44:56). Further, her work place is also the scene of Joel’s memories at several times. In one of these instances, the scene around Joel forms a visual blank, when the scene around Joel disintegrates and the books on the shelves surrounding him do not disappear but are wiped clean of their writing and reduced to collections of blank pages (see image 28 below). This process of erasure mirrors the creation of lacunae in literature and, together

66 with its spatial setting, points to the terms’ predominant use and origin in this medium.

In addition, there is Mary, frequently citing from her book of quotations and misreading them at times, as well as the choice of name for the company she works for. All of these

elements firmly tie the film to image 28 literature and each of them has some kind of connection to a blank or absence - be it a semantic one, a lack of understanding or the ripped out and blank pages of a diary.

Metareference, therefore, might in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, predominantly be a means to aid the representation of blanks, to highlight the presence of an absence, so to speak. The meta-elements effect and affect the gaps in meaning and ultimately serve to close them as well, thereby continuously drawing attention to their existence. The reason for this lies in the relative difficulty of representing blanks in a visual medium such as film, while trying to achieve a similar effect to that of blanks in literature. In other words, without the help of a second disruptive device to counterbalance and highlight the first, the intended effect might be lost. To give an example, several consecutive blank pages in a novel cannot be adapted by simply showing a blank screen for several minutes. While this is, of course, theoretically possible, the reader of the novel would simply be able to skip the empty pages, but the viewer in the cinema could not fast-forward the film and even if it were to be fast-forwarded. The blank, therefore, would in this case perhaps be perceived as a discursive error rather than an intended function on the level of story.

Thus, a blank represented on its own might have the wrong effect on the viewer or even go unnoticed altogether, since absence (to a certain extent) must always be framed by presence to be perceivable. Therefore, this is exactly the structure that Kaufman built. He constructed a frame (tale) around a hypodiegetic level which, in its final state, is fundamentally a noticeable blank, an absence of memory.

The implied question here is a relatively philosophic one: can a blank even exist on its own, or does it cease to exist when it cannot be perceived and thus has no impact or effect on the world?33 Therefore, Kaufman, who seems metareferentially holistic in his filmmaking, in that he always presents a central idea or concept on multiple levels and in multiple facets, represents philosophical concepts as a trope in this film, thus firmly placing them within the interpretative range of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Many critics have therefore even identified the exploration of philosophical concepts as the main function of the film in general as exemplified by the absences of memory, meaningfulness and morality represented therein. A certain link to philosophy is undeniable, not least since one philosopher in particular is quoted by Mary in the diegesis of the film, namely Friedrich Nietzsche. “Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders” (Eternal Sunshine 44:06)34.

In his essay “Miserably ever after: forgetting, repeating and affirming love in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, Troy Jollimore offers a detailed analysis of the applicability of Nietzsche’s philosophy to the film. He provides a particularly interesting discussion of the Nietzschean concept of the ‘eternal return’ or

‘eternal recurrence’, the notion that the world infinitely repeats itself over infinite time and space. Applied to Joel’s and Clementine’s situation, there is a

33 Similar to the well-known philosophical question “if a tree falls in a forest without anyone there to perceive it, does it make a sound?”, which is also frequently referenced or parodied in popular culture. 34 Original German: “Selig sind die Vergesslichen, denn sie werden auch mit ihren Dummheiten fertig.“ (1954:682).

68 seemingly inevitable cyclicality to their story, which is expressed and perpetuated by a number of mises-en-abyme and metalepses.

Lacuna’s promise of a “new life” (Eternal Sunshine 29:17) through the erasure of painful memories cannot be fulfilled, “all the procedure actually does is release Joel into a different kind of cycle of recurrence, one in which he will not only figuratively but literally relive the agonies [...] of meeting, falling in love with, and suffering alongside Clementine.” (Jollimore 2009: 56). The solution, according to Jollimore (paraphrasing Nietzsche) is to accept this eternal loop

“with full knowledge [...] of its darker aspects” (ibid) – a venture which Joel and Clementine seem to decide to undertake in their last conversation before the end of the film. This exchange, however, is, quite tellingly, also rife with semantic blanks (see the transcript of this dialog in subsection 4.4.1.), which mirror the process of erasure and thus allude to the possibility of its reoccurrence.

A further possible function of the metareferential devices used in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the Exploration of the Reality/Fiction opposition.

In this respect, the film very much operates within the trend of using postmodernist devices in mainstream films, a trend which Charlie Kaufman (notably with films such as Being John Malkovich in 1999) helped to initiate. The film’s hypodiegetic level is full of blanks, absences and fragments and as the level’s entire structure begins to disintegrate, “the line blurs between what is memory and what is metaphor, what is physical and what is conceptual, what is object and what is thought” (Trevett 2009: 211), paving the way for a number of metaleptic transgressions, as previously discussed. Various critics have also suggested that exactly this blurring of the real and the ficticious, as well as the modification of memory presents an analogy to the post 9/11 news coverage of this event (see for example Jess-Cooke, online) and according to David Martin- Jones (paraphrased by Higbee), the film can even be seen as an “allegory and

69 veiled critique of collective amnesia surrounding the causes of 9/11” (2009: 161). However, there seems to be little substance to these claims, particularly when looking at Kaufman’s entire body of work. The point of departure for Kaufman and his foremost focus in his writing is always a preoccupation with and exploration of the self. This can be observed in each of the films analyzed herein and perhaps even particularly so in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Accordingly, metareference for Kaufman is a means of representing different facets of one’s personality (Adaptation), exploring the importance of memory and experience in the creation of the self (Eternal Sunshine) or humankind’s lifelong search for meaning (Synecdoche). This latter aspect will now, be discussed more closely in the following section, which explores the use of metareference in Synecdoche, New York.

5. Metareference in Synecdoche, New York

5.1. A Short Synopsis of Synecdoche, New York

The central character in Synecdoche, New York is Caden Cotard (played by Philipp Seymour Hoffman), a relatively successful theater director who is not as lucky in his personal life. He lives with his wife Adele (played by Catherine Keener), who is a painter, and his daughter Olive in Schenectady, New York and at the beginning of the film we see him directing Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman to much critical acclaim. However, his personal life begins to come undone, as his wife decides to go to Berlin with Olive to show her art, suggesting that Caden remain behind. After the separation from his wife, Caden goes out with his box office manager Hazel, who he has been in love with for a while (and vice versa), but nothing more comes of it.

When Caden shortly after wins the prestigious MacArthur grant, a theater prize consisting of 50.000 Dollars, he decides to put together a large experimental theater piece. He rents an enormous warehouse, in which he eventually attempts to recreate New York in its entirety. To this end, Cotard hires a large number of actors and extras to play the parts of everyone living in New York. He also remarries and has another daughter with an actress he has known for some time and eventually also casts her to play the role of herself with another actor playing Caden. As the director encourages his actors to “live” their parts, the play slowly develops a life of its own and the decision to hire actors to play the first set of actors seems inevitable. At this point, the play has been in the rehearsal process for decades and while it slowly consumes and finally replaces the ‘real’ New York, Caden, who has been unwell from the beginning, becomes ever more decrepit and depressed. Eventually, he dies, having survived most of the other actors working on his ambitious project, without the play ever having been performed.

5.2. The “Chinese-Box World” of Synecdoche, New York

Through the embedded play, which has a recursive structure itself, the superstructure of the film Synecdoche, New York resembles what Brian McHale (1987: 111) calls a “Chinese box world”. However, compared to Adaptation, distinguishing between the various levels is much simpler here. Embedded within the diegetic level is the main hypodiegetic level, the play within the film. The boundaries of this lower level are clearly delineated and even have a physical representation in the form of the warehouse the play is contained in. In addition to this main hypodiegetic level, there are a number of other small mises-en-abyme in the form of TV commercials, cartoon series and news reports watched by the characters on the diegetic level, as well as the short glimpses of Caden’s staging of Death of a Salesman.

Although the diegetic level represents ‘reality’ within the realm of the film, the laws of this world do not conform to our reality. While, at first glance, the world of Synecdoche, New York seems to be a realistic representation, the viewer is slowly made aware of the disparity through various elements, ranging from subtle clues to overt impossibilities. Kaufman achieves this departure from reality by using the character of Caden as the focalizer through whom the viewers perceive the intradiegetic world. Caden’s view of the world is, however, distorted by his pessimistic outlook on life, as for instance manifested intradiegetically by his hypochondria and extradiegetically through Kaufman’s choice of surname for his protagonist. Cotard’s Syndrome or Cotard Delusion is a rare psychological condition, patients suffering from which believe that they do not exist or that they are either already dead or slowly dying due to the putrefaction or loss of their inner organs. Further symptoms listed for this illness include chronic depression, hypochondria, severe delusions and hallucinations

72 distorting the view of reality35 often resulting in derealization, i.e. an “alteration in the perception or experience of the external world so that it seems unreal.”36

An example for the subtle undermining of reality can be observed already in the first scene, which seems to show us one morning of the Cotard family. During the scene, however, various different dates are specified (by presenters on the radio, which can be heard in the background, or visible in the newspaper Caden is reading) for this particular day within less than five minutes, despite no evident time lapse between these announcements. These hints, although very likely to be missed by viewers watching the film for the first time, are an early indicator of the fact that “the world we see represented on screen is not an exactly mimetic, objective, empirical one”, as Richard Deming (2011: 194) observes in an essay on the film. Deming further remarks that "the film never fully breaks with nor fully mimics what we think of as the “real world”” but that the “disruptions” (ibid 195) become more obvious in the course of the film. Caden’s friend Hazel later buys a house which is on fire and which continues to burn, without being destroyed, for the rest of the film. This and the fact that the other characters notice that the house is on fire and do not seem to find this strange, marks a transitory point in the film according to Deming.

Such an explicitly surrealistic gesture or image signals that the logic of the film and the audience’s expectations of its condition and behaviors change completely at that moment, altering the viewers’ relationship to what occurs on screen, destabilizing what distinctions one makes between the real and the surreal. (ibid)

In other words, this event represents a metaleptic disruption of aesthetic illusion in the viewers, as they are confronted with the obvious fictionality of the represented world. As we have already observed in Adaptation and Eternal

35 Wikipedia (2014). “Cotard delusion”. Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia. [Online]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotard_delusion [2015, November 5]. 36 Wikipedia (2014). “Derealization”. Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia. [Online]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derealization [2015, November 5].

Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, such a clash between realism and surrealism, or one might say reality and fiction, is not uncommon in Charlie Kaufman’s films. In an essay comparing Adaptation and Synecdoche, New York, Derek Hill comments on Kaufman’s covert surrealism:

Kaufman’s achievement of authenticity has never come from staying within the parameters of realism. All of his films exude heavy doses of surrealism and hallucinatory fantasy […]. Even as the narrative structure and plot points reflect surreal ideas, the depiction of the characters is usually grounded by attention to realistic décor, gritty locations and generally unglamorous clothes and makeup for the actors – elements that likewise distinguish Kaufman’s films from others with similar fantasy stylistics. […]. But what is fascinating about the look of [Synecdoche, New York] is that […] lighting schemes are bright colors are neutral, and the film has a televisionlike synthetic sheen to it, almost subliminally drawing out the film’s artificiality. (Hill 2011: 217)

While this is certainly true, it is important to add that this ‘synthetic sheen’ is not likely to be noticed by the viewers as deviating from any common filmic conventions. On the contrary, only viewers familiar with the usual visual aesthetics of Charlie Kaufman films will notice an irregularity here. The immediate effect of this discursive element on its own is thus, as Hill concedes, subliminal at best. However, precisely the fact that such a conventional device is used in conjunction with less traditional ones represents an important factor in understanding the functions of the film’s metareferential devices. These functions will, however, be discussed in more detail in subchapter 5.4.

In any case, by the time the main hypodiegetic level is introduced, the audience has been made aware of the diegetic level’s surrealism and of its thereby foregrounded fictionality in a more overt manner. Therefore, the unlikelihood and ultimate impossibility of Caden’s plan to represent the entire city of New York within a warehouse, is perhaps not perceived as strongly as it would otherwise have been. The main hypodiegetic level, as previously discussed, is

74 clearly delineated in terms of its boundaries and therefore it is, at least at first, also clear to the viewers where the ‘reality’ of the diegetic level ends and where the fiction of the hypodiegetic level begins. However, the hypodiegetic level is also a meta-element. It is a classic mise-en-abyme, which contains mirrors of itself in an infinite regress. Further, as scenes from the diegetic level are recreated, it becomes a comment on the present film and indeed, as suggested by the film’s title, on the film industry as a whole (the latter function will be discussed further in section 5.4).

As this metareferential theater project progresses, it grows ever more intricate and multi-layered. As a director, Caden Cotard is highly ambitious and detailed in his wish to exactly represent every single detail of daily life in New York City. Eventually, a second set of actors is hired to mirror the original one and the hypodiegetic level moves towards infinite regress. As Cotard thus holds not one but two mirrors up to reality, the boundaries between reality and fiction become more unstable. The actors also begin to occasionally substitute the people they are playing in ‘real’ life and often it is unclear who is mirroring whom. Thus, the hypodiegetic level slowly begins to influence the reality of the diegetic level. This diegetic level, in turn, is constructed as highly permeable, due to its established spatial and temporal instability.

Therefore, Synecdoche, New York has another reality/fiction continuum, rather than a straightforward opposition, where the hypodiegetic level metaleptically transgresses its own boundaries into the diegetic level. Eventually, Caden’s play completely substitutes that which it was originally meant to represent. The ‘real’ New York becomes increasingly decayed as the play slowly seems to absorb all its inhabitants, a decay which is then again mirrored on the hypodiegetic level. Therefore, the combination of the metareferential nature of the hypodiegetic level and its self-transgression into ‘reality’ also render this mise-en-abyme a

75 simulacrum. This creation of a simulacrum is by no means an unintentional one, as the concept of the simulacrum is (in true Kaufman fashion) explicitly referenced in the screenplay when Caden suggests it as a potential title for his play. This awareness of the concept (both, Caden’s and Kaufman’s) in combination with the plethora of other explicitly and implicitly metareferential elements used in the film definitely makes this simulacrum, although the concept is not inherently metareferential, one of the most important meta- elements in Synecdoche, New York.

As previously mentioned, the play within the film is not the only hypodiegetic level. There is a number of smaller mises-en-abyme in Synecdoche, New York, some contained in the diegetic level, others embedded as hypo-hypodiegetic levels within Caden’s play. The most prominent example perhaps is Caden’s other play, the one we see him directing at the beginning – Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. This mise-en-abyme is, while also constituting an intermedial reference, clearly metareferential, since the play’s main character Willy Loman greatly resembles Caden in some ways. Deming describes Loman as “a character somewhat unfixed in time, as he regularly disappears into flashbacks of earlier stages of his life” (2011: 197). Loman, therefore, is just as mentally unstable as Caden is physically.

The first of two short glimpses the viewers get to see of the play is a scene shortly before the end (of the play) in which Loman kills himself by crashing his car into a wall. Deming notes, that the film thus “begins with a death (Loman’s) and then, two hours later, ends with another: Caden’s” (ibid). Therefore, this metareferential element mirrors the film’s overall bleakness and already foreshadows its unhappy ending, a point which is later also reiterated by the character of Hazel when she remarks that “[t]he end is built into the beginning. What can you do?” (Synecdoche, New York. The Shooting Script. 2008: 170).

Thereby, she touches upon what is perhaps the major theme of the film, a theme which, according to Italo Calvino is “[t]he ultimate meaning to which all stories refer […]: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death.” (Calvino 1992: 257).

This theme of transience is also frequently referred to in the other small hypodiegetic levels, which include a recurring cartoon series, health care announcements and commercials as well as other fragments of films or television series which can all occasionally be seen playing on television. In each of these installments, Caden eventually appears either as himself or as an animated character. He does not, however, metaleptically transgress into those levels, but watches himself on television. It is not made explicit whether these thus altered TV installments are only a figment of Caden’s imagination or whether they actually exist as a part of the distorted ‘reality’ of the diegetic level. However, this distinction is irrelevant for the function of these metareferential elements. A closer analysis of those functions will be provided in chapter 5.4 of this thesis. What follows now, is a closer analysis of several important scenes from Synecdoche, New York.

5.3. Scene Analyses

5.3.1. The Beginning with the Built-in End

Synecdoche, New York opens with the usual showing of the affiliated film studios’ logos and production credits over which a little girl can be heard singing: There's a place I long to be // A certain town that's dear to me // Home to Mohawks and GE // It's called Schenectady // I was born there and I'll die there // My first home I hope to buy there // Have a kid or at least try

there // Sweet Schenectady // And when I'm buried and I'm dead // Upstate worms will eat my head. (Synecdoche, New York 00:08)37

This song did not previously exist, but was written for the film by Charlie Kaufman. The song immediately sets the tone for the film and the fact that a little girl (Caden’s daughter Olive, as we later learn) is singing it, is very pertinent and suggests a grim and melancholy view of the future. Thus, the theme of death, as well as the fatalistic notion that the end is built into the beginning (as discussed in the previous chapter) are established from the very beginning of the film. This latter theme is later re-emphasized not only through Hazel’s above statement, but also by the fact that Caden in his production of Death of a Salesman casts young actors to play Willy Loman and his wife. He explains his casting choice by explaining its inherent dramatic irony, “Try to keep in mind that a young person playing Willy Loman thinks that he is only pretending to be at the end of a life full of despair, but the tragedy is that you, the young actor, will end up in this very place of desolation.” (ibid 10:16). Therefore, we see Kaufman’s directorial choices mirrored by those of Caden and it seems that the protagonist himself functions as one of the film’s many meta-elements.

During the little girl’s song, the first image of the film comes into view. It is a close-up of a clock radio and, as the time on the display jumps to 7:45 am, the radio is turned on and the girl’s singing becomes unintelligible. Now, the voice of the radio presenter can be heard announcing the date as the 22nd of September and we get the first glimpse of the protagonist, as the scene is cut to a medium shot of him in bed, slowly waking up. However, the camera is not directed at Caden, but at a mirror next to his bed in which we see him reflected (see image 29 below). In fact, as Caden is shown slowly sitting up and putting

37 This quotation is not contained in the shooting script. Therefore, the film is cited and the time at which the quotation starts is indicated instead of a page number.

78 on his glasses, we continue to see only his reflection, now in the mirror on the back of his bedroom door (see image 30 below).

image 29 image 30 image 31

Thereby, another one of the film’s themes is established, namely that of holding a mirror up to the world in order to perceive it more clearly by looking at its reflection. Moreover, the fact that two different mirrors are used seems to already foreshadow the hypodiegetic level’s infinite regress. Richard Deming (2011: 198) further suggests the introduction of the theme of watching and spectatorship as a way of providing suture, i.e. the viewers’ identification with a character or situation, observing that “[t]he reflection that confronts us is not just Caden’s but our own as well: given the placement of the camera we are in the position to look in the mirror onscreen – instead of seeing our own reflection we see Caden’s, but he is now us, we are him.” Also this theme is later reemphasized on various occasions. Firstly, by the introduction of the character of Sammy, who follows Caden unseen for decades and watches his every move, until he is eventually cast to portray Caden in the play staged in the warehouse. In fact, Sammy is present from the very beginning (as can be seen in image 31 above, where he watches Caden while the latter brings in the newspaper), but the audience does, of course, not know his identity yet. Secondly, by the fact that Caden appears, as previously discussed, inside cartoons and commercials on television, all of which perhaps symbolizes aesthetic illusion, i.e. the viewer’s tendency towards (over-) identification with and immersion in a work of art.

While Caden slowly gets out of bed, the radio is the most prominent sound. The presenter talks about the arrival of fall and introduces a German professor of

79 literature who talks about autumn in literature and continues to quote (quite tellingly) the last stanza from Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “Herbsttag” in its translation by Stephen Mitchell:

RADIO PRESENTER Why do so many people write about the fall?

GERMAN PROFESSOR Well, I think it’s seen as the beginning of the end, really. If the year is a life, then September, the beginning of fall, is when the bloom is off the rose and things start to die. It’s a melancholy month. And maybe because of that. Quite beautiful. RADIO PRESENTER

Is there something you might read to us? GERMAN PROFESSOR I’d love to. Whoever has no house now, will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone, will sit, read, write long letters through the evening, and wander the boulevards, up and down, restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing. RADIO PRESENTER Goodness, that’s harsh, isn’t it? GERMAN PROFESSOR Well, perhaps. But truthful. (Synecdoche, New York 00:59)

Also this short sequence is of great significance, as it not only further highlights the themes of transience and death, but also foreshadows some of the film’s later plot points. The professor’s description of the petal falling off the rose paints a picture which reoccurs in a later scene in which Caden’s daughter Olive, by that time 40 years old and living in Berlin, talks for the last time to her father who visits her at her deathbed. Her chest and arms are tattooed with roses growing along a vine and it is an infection contracted through these tattoos which is now killing her. After she dies, we see a close-up of her right forearm bearing such a tattoo of a rose. Suddenly a petal breaks away from one of the rosebuds and lands on the hospital bed, from which it is picked up by Caden (image 32 below). By this point in the film, however, this strange ontological metalepsis is easily accepted, as the line between reality and fiction has been

80 sufficiently blurred. Further, there is the professor’s heavy accent which sounds quite similar to Olive’s in the death scene. This and the fact that young Olive can still be heard singing in the background during this part of the radio interview seems to confirm the connection between the two scenes and thus the meaningfulness of this sequence for the idea that beginning and end are always inextricably linked.

image 32 image 33 image 34

The action continues downstairs in the Cotard family’s house. As Caden and his wife Adele and daughter Olive go through their morning routine, there is no visual evidence suggesting that this is anything but a continuous scene taking place on one single morning. However, if the viewers pay close attention to the radio still audible in the background, as well as Caden’s newspaper, various headlines from which fill the frame several times, and the expiry date printed on the milk carton, they realize that by the time Caden goes to the bathroom to shave, over a month seems to have passed. While it was, as mentioned previously, the 22nd of September when Caden woke up, the date is announced as October 8th when Caden drinks his coffee. As he begins to read his newspaper, the date printed on it reads October 14th, while, simultaneously, it is announced as October 15th over the radio. When Caden turns to another article in his newspaper, the date says October 17th. Moments later, Caden removes a milk carton from the fridge, the expiry date of which is labeled as Oct. 20th, and announces that the milk has already expired. Only seconds later, the radio presenter is heard wishing listeners a “Happy Halloween” (Oct. 31st), but when Caden opens his newspaper again, the date is November 2nd, while, at this exact same moment, the radio presenter says it is November 1st. This rapid time lapse

81 is juxtaposed with the visually continuous nature of the scene in which there is no change in lighting, background decoration or the characters’ clothes and appearance. This odd juxtaposition is perhaps supposed to simultaneously illustrate the monotony of Caden’s life as well as to mimetically instill in the audience the feeling later voiced by Caden that “[w]e are all hurtling toward death” (Synecdoche, New York. The Shooting Script. 2008: 66). However, as stated previously, viewers would have to pay close attention to background details in order to notice this discrepancy.

Eventually, Adele leaves Caden in order to go to Berlin and pursue her art, taking Olive with her. Alone in Adele’s basement studio, a distraught Caden mourns his loss, when the scene suddenly cuts to a montage of happy people enjoying life. Then the frame is shown at a wider angle and we realize that it is a commercial which Caden is watching on an old, grimy television. Then, showing a happy mother and daughter, the commercial fills the screen again, signifying Caden’s immersion in it. Another moment later, Caden has transgressed the border into this hypodiegetic level in a rhetorical (i.e. imagined) metalepsis, scratching his head as though not sure what he is doing there (see image 35 below). The diegetic Caden regards this with some degree of puzzlement (see image 36 below), while the hypodiegetic representation of him has assumed the role of the father playing with his daughter. As the commercial ends, another more somber one starts which shows an old man walking a derelict street in a haze of fog. Simultaneously, Caden starts scrubbing various spots on the floor and the table next to him with his toothbrush (see image 37 below).

image 35 image 36 image 37

While the video of the old man is still visible on the television screen, Caden’s scrubbing becomes ever more furious and soon he tries to rid the entire dingy room of every last bit of dirt, while the passing of a lengthy stretch of time is signified by a rapid succession of various commercials heard playing on the television off-screen. In this short scene, various important plot points of the film are foreshadowed. The most obvious, of course, is Caden’s metaleptic transgression into a hypodiegetic level, which later reoccurs, as he casts an actor to portray him. This actor slowly takes over Caden’s role until he (Caden) assumes the role of an entirely different character, namely that of Ellen, the cleaning lady. This latter transgression is foreshadowed through his furious cleaning, which he is shown doing again at various other points in the film.

Further, the progression of his cleaning, i.e. Caden’s starting with a small and his seeming inability to stop until he has attended to every inch of the room, mirrors his later approach to his play. There, his intentions start out as wanting to show ‘something truthful’, but his plans and ambitions continue to grow until his plan is to represent New York City in its entirety. Moreover, even his ultimate failure in achieving the latter is foreshadowed in this scene, as the scene of the old man walking a deserted street is actually a shot of an aged Caden wandering the remnants of the deserted warehouse which was supposed to house his play.

Thus, the main themes in Synecdoche, New York are all introduced already within the first five minutes and many of the film’s important events are foreshadowed in its first few scenes, all supporting the overarching idea that the end really is built into the beginning, at least in the case of this and other films by Charlie Kaufman. The relevance of this central idea and the meaningfulness of these first scenes will be discussed in the following subchapters, which will also provide a more detailed analysis of the metareferential devices employed in Synecdoche, New York.

5.3.2. The Creation of a Simulacrum

When Caden wins the highly remunerated McArthur grant38, Caden decides that he wants to stage “something big and true and tough”, stating that he wants to “put [his] real self into something.” (Synecdoche, New York. The Shooting Script. 2008: 61). In order to carry out his plan, he rents a vast warehouse in New York City, and begins the first rehearsals for his theater piece by relaying his vision to the actors:

CADEN We’ll start by talking honestly. Out of that a piece of theater will evolve. I’ll begin. (long pause) I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. […] [R]egardless of how this particular thing works out, I will be dying. So will you. So will everyone here. And I want to explore that unflinchingly. […] We are all hurtling towards death. (silence) Yet, here we are, for the moment, alive. Each of us knowing we will die; each of us secretly believing we won’t. (Synecdoche, New York. The Shooting Script. 2008: 65)

However, Caden soon begins to struggle, as he tries to cope with the minutia of wanting to be truthful in his representation of life. Almost two decades later, the play is still in his rehearsal stages and Caden has still not found his vision. This is best exemplified in another speech he makes to his actors in which he reveals his latest idea on how to keep control of the play, which already foreshadows the forming of a simulacrum in that he tries to convey the arbitrariness of real life through an artificial process.

CADEN I won’t settle for anything less than the brutal truth. Brutal! Each day I’ll hand you a scrap of paper. It’ll tell you what happened to you that day. “You felt a lump in your breast. You looked at your wife and saw a stranger.” Etcetera. TOM Caden, when are we going to get an audience in here? It’s been seventeen years. CADEN And I’m not excusing myself from this either. I will have someone play me, to delve into the murky, cowardly depths of my lonely, fucked-up being. He’ll get notes, too. And they will correspond to the “notes” I truly get each day from my God. (Synecdoche, New York. The Shooting Script. 2008: 109)

38 At the time the screenplay to Synecdoche, New York was written, the prize money was half a million dollars paid out over five years. It has increased to 625.000 Dollars since.

The question raised here by Kaufman is perhaps whether reality can ever be truthfully represented through the medium of fiction; and a closer examination of an approach to achieving this seems to follow suit, namely in the form of the character of Sammy (played by Tom Noonan). Sammy has been following Caden for twenty years (for reasons not explicitly specified in the movie) and promises that in hiring him, Caden will see who he (Caden) really is (cf. ibid 116).

In many ways, Sammy acts as a catalyst for the further development and eventual infinite regression of the play. By holding up a mirror to himself, Caden is finally able to follow his initial intention of ‘putting his true self into the play’. Simultaneously, however, this decision later causes Caden to hold up a second mirror to his hypodiegetic world, when he also casts an actor to play Sammy and, as can be inferred from the exponential multiplication of actors, for the other cast members as well. Soon, Caden’s hypodiegetic production becomes so big that it begins to draw its life from the ‘real’ New York City, thereby slowly taking its place. This incipient creation of a simulacrum is alluded to in an explicit metareferential statement by Caden, in a scene soon after Sammy is cast, when he leaves the warehouse with his new wife Claire and their daughter Ariel.

EXT. NYC CITY STREET - 2025 - EVENING Caden exits the warehouse with Claire and Ariel, who is now five. Sammy walks alongside. There is a long line of people waiting to find out about tickets for the show.

MAN When is it opening? […] We need to get in. It’s bad out here.

They move on, passing poor people waiting in line for food distributed from a military truck. There are sick people being herded into a scary bus marked “Fun Land”. The guards wear surgical masks.

CADEN I was thinking of calling it Simulacrum. What do you think? CLAIRE I don’t know what that means. (Synecdoche, New York. The Shooting Script. 2008: 109)

Characteristically for a simulacrum, also the identities and roles of the diegetic and hypodiegetic characters begin to slowly shift and interchange in a series of quasi-ontological metalepses. The first instance of this is also directly initiated by Sammy, when he hands Caden a slip of paper, just as Caden has been doing with his actors. The slip of paper contains the address of Caden’s ex-wife Adele who is temporarily living in New York again. Caden visits the address39 and, in a bizarre turn of events, ends up assuming the place of her cleaning lady, Ellen. Thus, Caden continues to clean Adele’s apartment by night, without ever meeting her in person. This, at times confusing, identity shift between diegetic and hypodiegetic characters is further exemplified in the following exchange between Caden and Hazel, the actors hired to play them (Sammy and Tammy), as well as the actor hired to play Sammy (Jimmy):

TAMMY Hi, Caden. How was your night? SAMMY Okay, yours? TAMMY Eh. Philip was colicky. I was up all night

Caden looks over at Hazel for confirmation. She nods, slightly freaked out.

CADEN Sorry. SAMMY (to Tammy) Sorry. Everybody here? TAMMY (looking at clipboard) Sammy’s not here. Jimmy called and said there’s some subway problem.

Jimmy rushes into the warehouse.

JIMMY Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. (sweetly) Hi, Hazel. TAMMY Hi, Sammy. SAMMY (to Tammy) Sammy likes you.

39 Quite interestingly, the name on Adele’s apartment door says ‘Capgras’, which is an allusion to another mental illness. The so-called Capgras syndrome constitutes the delusionary belief of a person that the people close to them have been replaced by impostors who are identical in looks. Also here, we can see Kaufman’s tendency of representing important elements on multiple levels or in various different ways, which is not unlike Caden’s inclination towards minutia in his representation. Cf. Wikipedia “Capgras delusion”. Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia. [Online]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capgras_delusion [2015, November 8]

Caden looks at Hazel. She nods.

SAMMY (CONT’D) Hazel, could you get everyone situated? I need to speak to Will about some new sets. […] TAMMY Yeah. We’ll take it from June 9th? […] CADEN Oh, shit. I need to do that, too. Haze, keep an eye on things? HAZEL Yup. June 9th? (Synecdoche, New York. The Shooting Script. 2008: 148f)

Here, it is clear, that the hypodiegetic characters have taken over control to some degree, as the diegetic Caden and Hazel have fallen into passive and reactive roles, taking their cues from their fictionalized counterparts. Most notably again, it is Sammy, who is in charge and causes the action to move forward.

Accordingly, the beginning of the ending is then marked by Sammy’s suicide, which represents, on the one hand, a break in the strictly mimetic hypodiegetic world and, on the other hand, is perhaps also a foreshadowing of Caden’s later death. Also here, the ultimate meaning of all stories according to Calvino (continuity of life, inevitability of death) is referred to, as love and death – beginning and ending – are again juxtaposed. The scene is a mirroring of an earlier part of the film in which Caden witnesses a happily married Hazel on a restaurant’s roof terrace and wants to jump, but is stopped while climbing onto the sill. This, in turn, was then also witnessed by Sammy, who followed Caden wherever he went prior to being cast as his substitute. What leads Sammy to his tragic decision to throw himself off a building is the eventual union of Caden and Hazel on the warehouse representation of the restaurant roof terrace. Like Caden, Sammy has fallen in love with Hazel but cannot get together with her. Unlike Caden, however, Sammy cannot be stopped from killing himself, leading to the first substantial deviation of the hypodiegetic world from the diegetic one. A fact which causes great irritation in Caden more than anything else, as he

87 yells at Sammy’s dead body lying crumpled in the street, “Sammy! I didn’t jump, Sammy! A man stopped me before I jumped. Get up! I didn’t jump.” (Synecdoche, New York. Film 2:03:50)

This quasi-metaleptic break in the hypodiegetic world is also represented physically. When Sammy is shown lying dead on the ground, we see that he has actually fallen through the fake cardboard street. Metaphorically, his ‘un- mimetic’ death has visibly ripped the fabric of the hypodiegetic world. However, to speak of a true metalepsis would be wrong in this case, although Sammy’s death can be viewed as a meta-element highlighting the fact that the world within the warehouse is merely a simulacrum, and thus interrupting the (intra- and extradiegetic) viewers’ aesthetic illusion.

5.3.3. A Tragic Ending - The last few Scenes

Sammy’s death marks the point at which Caden completely loses control (a great part of which he had already relinquished to Sammy) over his play, as well as over his life. The degeneration of both these ontological levels has already been foreshadowed by the slow degeneration of Caden’s body and indeed in his very name with its root in the Latin “cadere”, which means ‘to fall’ or ‘to tumble’ and which is also used metaphorically in the meaning ‘to die’ (as in ‘to fall in war’). Now, this degeneration is foregrounded even more by a renewed emphasis of death as a sort of unifying factor. Very soon after, also Hazel dies of smoke poisoning, after having lived in a continuously burning house for decades. One of her final remarks summarizes the central theme of Synecdoche, New York, which has already been discussed, namely that “[T]he end is built into the beginning” (Synecdoche, New York. The Shooting Script 2008: 170). In the original screenplay, it is also at this time that Caden’s daughter Olive dies. In the film, this scene was then moved to a much earlier point. Fittingly, however, the

88 scene does indeed reach back to the beginning, more specifically the very first scene of the film in which the radio presenter quotes the Rilke poem which is then, in turn, mirrored in the ontological metalepsis of a petal falling from one of Olive’s tattoos onto the hospital bed.

Also due to Sammy’s death, the role of Caden needs to be filled again and, in an untraditional casting choice, Millicent (played by Dianne Wiest) who had previously worked on the production in the role of Ellen the cleaning lady (i.e. Caden’s nightly alter ego), is selected for the part, after assuring Caden that she understands him completely. Her summarization of Caden’s character quoted below, which she utters while almost directly facing the camera is explicitly metareferential. In a film in which the diegesis is otherwise represented as basically realistic, such a perfectly apt and analytical characterization would certainly almost metaleptically destroy the viewers’ aesthetic illusion. Here, however, Millicent’s words barely have any disruptive impact; on the contrary, the pervasiveness of the surrealist and metareferential devices employed serves to ensure a continued immersion in the progression of the story.

MILLICENT Caden Cotard is a man already dead, living in a half-world between stasis and antistasis. Time is concentrated and chronology confused for him. Up until recently he has strived

valiantly to make sense of his situation, but now he has turned to stone. (Synecdoche, New York. The Shooting Script. 2008: 176).

Now more than ever, the theater piece becomes a way for Caden to understand, to order and ultimately to control his life and environment. However, his over- ambitious new plan of mimetically representing one entire day, the day before Hazel died, exactly as it happened, soon gets the better of him. He admits that he has “run out of ideas” and, in a bizarre series of ontological metalepses, takes on Millicent’s past role of Ellen the cleaning lady with Millicent now also taking

89 over the “real” Caden’s part and directing the play. Caden soon completely relies on Millicent alias Caden to direct every aspect of his life. The final scenes of Synecdoche, New York are thus narrated by Millicent, as she gives Caden instructions through an earpiece he is wearing. In the very last scene, a now elderly Caden is walking through the deserted and desolate streets within the warehouse. As already described in section 5.3.1., this scene was briefly visible near the beginning of the film, where it can be seen playing on TV while Caden is cleaning Adele’s deserted painting studio. There are no people around except for a woman, who was also previously featured in the scene described above, as she played the mother in the television commercial which Caden metaleptically transgressed into. Thus, in its final scenes, Synecdoche, New York, heavily references its own beginning. Moreover, by the fact that the woman on Caden’s side represents a mother figure, the film further alludes to the very beginning of life in a reiteration of a notion central to this and other Kaufman films, namely that beginning and end are inextricably linked. On Millicent’s instructions, Caden approaches the woman.

CADEN Where is everybody? WOMAN Mostly dead. Some have left. CADEN Will you sit with me for a moment? I’m very tired. And lonely. (they sit) […] Everyone’s dreams in all those apartments. All those secrets we’ll never know. […] I’m sorry the experiment didn’t work. […] I feel I’ve disappointed you terribly. WOMAN No. No. I am so proud of you. MILLICENT (V.O.) Ask her if you can put your head on her shoulder. CADEN Can I put my head on your shoulder? WOMAN Yes. (he does) CADEN […] (the picture slowly starts fading to grey) I know how to do this play now. I have an idea. I think – (Synecdoche, New York 1:57:35)

With the screen almost completely grey at this point, Millicent’s gives Caden his final instruction, “Die.” (ibid) and thus, with the screen completely grey and the soundtrack slowly fading out, the film ends. The soundtrack here beautifully mirrors the action, as the final in a series of cadences, to which the character’s name also bears an allusion, remains unfinished, just like Caden’s theater piece.

image 38

5.4. Functions of Metareference in Synecdoche, New York

Two of the major themes in Synecdoche, New York are the transience of time and its inevitable consequence – death, and Kaufman has chosen to use metareferential structures in order to study and represent these ideas on film. Those themes of transience and death can, of course, be seen most clearly in the final scenes. Although, in another reiteration of the film’s prominent message that “the end is built into the beginning”, they are already manifested in the discursive element of Caden’s surname, which echoes the illness ‘Cotard’s

Syndrome’, as discussed previously, with Caden being the living manifestation of this disorder. From the very beginning of the film, Caden’s health is represented as being in rapid decline (which is also alluded to in his first name, as previously discussed). However, as we can see, by the film’s ending he has

91 reached a relatively old age. Therefore, one of the symptoms of Cotard syndrome, hypochondria, is clearly present. Also the further symptoms, depression, severe delusions and hallucinations distorting the view of reality, are undoubtedly visible in this character.

Since Caden is the focalizer through whom the intradiegetic world is perceived, this also leads to the distortion of reality in Synecdoche, New York, and it is quite clear that the film’s reality does not conform to our known reality in many aspects. Even if we disregard the implied impossibility of representing an exact replica of New York City inside a warehouse located within this very city, the deviation of the film’s diegetic reality from our own is established early on in the film, beginning with the instability of time already in the first scene. When Hazel then buys a house which is on fire and which continues to burn steadily for 20 years or so, the viewers must accept this surrealist reality as their new frame of reference. Thus, the metareferential elements, which are very frequently and overtly employed, become more readily acceptable and are, to a certain extent, normalized. Their function, therefore, cannot simply be a showcasing of them and, in a broader sense, of the fantastic possibilities postmodernist film has to offer, as might be the case in other Kaufman films. The actually intended effect might have been quite the contrary. In Synecdoche, New York, Kaufman presents a diegetic world which is based on unrealistic principles and which presents many explicitly metareferential elements in a very traditional way, i.e. following the usual filmic conventions of the associated genre. Examples for this normalization of unrealistic elements can be seen in the first scene where a continuous shot is used to represent a time span of several weeks or in the film’s general visual presentation, with its “televisionlike synthetic sheen” referenced by Hill (2011: 217) and discussed in subchapter 5.2., which runs counter to the representation of its surrealist diegetic world. In thus pairing them with metareferential and surrealist elements, the filmmaker draws

92 attention to those typical conventions in order to force the spectator to contemplate them on a meta-level and perhaps to question their functions within and effect on contemporary mainstream film.

In true Kaufman fashion, this function of putting conventional and thus largely unnoticed elements under scrutiny is also alluded to on another level, namely through the character of Caden. Due to his illness, he experiences a loss or inhibition of basic bodily functions such as the production of saliva or tears causing him to have trouble in swallowing and digesting his food. These basic bodily functions are put in an unconventionally clear focus in the following transcribed scene where Caden and Hazel eat lunch together, thus beautifully mirroring the aforementioned overall theme of laying bare the constructed-ness of accepted conventions to a highly comedic effect.

The food arrives. Caden looks at his plate and concentrates.

HAZEL What are you doing? CADEN Salivating. (pause) I have to concentrate. (pause) Biofeedback training. HAZEL Huh. […]

He swallows some food and then concentrates. She watches him. […] He concentrates some more. She stares at him.

CADEN (CONT’D) I’m digesting HAZEL It’s really disturbing. (Synecdoche, New York. The Shooting Script. 2008: 65)

Since Caden as the focalizer is often an important part in this process and since, more obviously, he is also a director and creator, his character might be seen as a substitute (or a synecdoche, if you will) representing Charlie Kaufman and thus, on a larger scale, the creative industry as a whole. As we have already observed in the case of Adaptation, the film Synecdoche, New York thus also comments on the process of creation and the difficulties involved in producing

93 sophisticated material for a broad audience. Here, a basic motif in the works of Charlie Kaufman emerges again, namely his usual subtle (or, in the case of Adaptation, not so subtle) critique of the importance of the financial aspects of popular filmmaking, which are - to his mind, perhaps wrongly - involved in writer’s and directors’ decisions on what to bring to the screen. Caden only has the ability to undertake his ambitious project (to create something ‘honest’), because he has won the McArthur grant, which is associated with a substantial amount of money and which is also colloquially referred to as a ‘genius grant’. Similarly, also Kaufman has been labeled a genius early on in his career, due to the unexpected success of Being John Malkovich, and has thus had the opportunity to be more experimental in his filmmaking, an opportunity which he might not have received if he had not been able to ‘prove’ that his films can draw large audiences and make money. When looking at his oeuvre, it seems clear that Kaufman views filmmaking as an art, and he seems to argue that this is how screenplays should be treated by Hollywood studios and not in terms of how much money they can be expected to make.

Undeniably, then, it is not only habits in filmmaking but also in film watching which are thematized, since holding up a mirror to Caden not only provides us with an image of Kaufman, but also of the spectator. Caden, as the focalizer through whom the viewers perceive the film, is also the character with which the spectator identifies and, as Richard Deming suggests, the analogy between Caden and us is already drawn in one of the first shots of the film, when we watch at Caden’s reflection in the mirror and “he is now us, we are him” (2011: 198). Of course, the more obvious mirror held up to Caden, and thus also to us as spectators, is the character of Sammy (and later that of Millicent). In conjunction with the function discussed the above, this might serve to express criticism of the fact that contemporary mainstream audiences accept conventional filmmaking too readily, foregoing more experimental productions

94 in favor of the more conventional variations on a small set of storylines immanent to a given genre.

There might, however, be another level to this argument. The mise-en-abyme at the foundation of the film’s ontological structure seems to suggest that we cannot truly look at something without also considering its representation. Accordingly, we cannot comprehensively understand the world without analyzing its mirror in fiction (and synecdochally, film in the present case). The creation of a simulacrum is then perhaps supposed to suggest that it is not only reality which can influence fiction, but also vice versa. Here, Kaufman draws on the philosophy of Michel Foucault and the idea that knowledge, meaning and, ultimately, truth are created by those in power. In the present analogy, those in power are Hollywood studios, which create the ‘truth’ of what audiences want to watch. Kaufman’s argument seems to be that in the struggle between artistry and commercialism (which is in the film and television industry also colloquially referred to as the dichotomy between ‘literate’ and ‘illiterate’ programming), particularly mainstream filmmakers have a responsibility to create intelligent material in order to promote a higher intellectual standard among audiences, which in turn will not only increase the demand for more artistic and experimental filmmaking but could in theory be beneficial for society as a whole. This assumption seems to be supported by the subject matter of Synecdoche, New York, which transcends Kaufman’s usually quite isolated contemplation of the self, instead offering up a study of how it is influenced by the world and how the world is in turn influenced by it.

6. Conclusion

When looking at the three analyzed movies as a sample of Charlie Kaufman’s oeuvre, some key ideas and concerns in his films as well as various motivations for his pervasive use of metareferential elements and techniques can certainly be identified. The two fundamental themes which seem most prevalent in Kaufman’s work are the exploration of the self and of one’s identity as well as an exploration or criticism of mainstream Hollywood filmmaking. In order to examine these two broad fields, the writer and director uses metareference in a variety of ways as well as to different and often quite opposing effects.

The perhaps most expected function of metareference, namely that of laying bare the fictionality of a given work, however, seems curiously absent. In Adaptation, for example, the film’s hypodiegetic structure and the Kaufman brothers’ metaleptic transgressions to and from it provide potential for identification and create tension and motivation in the two storylines, thus heightening the viewer’s immersion and aesthetic illusion as opposed to detracting from it. The same holds true for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where the plethora of interwoven hypodiegetic levels have a unifying effect, as they make it possible for the viewers to reconstruct the film’s elusive timeline. As these hypodiegetic levels also represent the memories two lovers have of each other, a potential for viewer involvement and identification is also created in this case.

In Synecdoche, New York, this unifying effect is to a large extent lost, as the intricacies of the mise-en-abyme at the film’s core can be hard to follow at times. The fictionality of the film, however, is foregrounded from the very beginning so that what is highlighted by the metareferential elements instead is

96 the obscurity of what we consider normal, conventional, real. Together with the film’s very prevalent theme of the inevitability of death, one could be tempted to classify the film as postmodernist and Kaufman as a postmodernist writer, since, according to McHale, postmodernist fiction, in a sense, “is always about death” (McHale 1987: 231). However, while variations on the theme of death are certainly present in Kaufman’s other works as well (e.g. in the themes of forgetting and being forgotten, of creation as a way of achieving immortality, or simply as a catalytic plot element), it would be inaccurate to classify Kaufman as a postmodernist, since the search of meaning and truth in representation, concepts which were traditionally negated in postmodernist works, is very much at the core of his work. Indeed, Robert McKee, the very writing instructor and film critic represented in Adaptation, calls Kaufman “an old-fashioned Modernist” in a commentary featured in the film’s shooting script (2002: 131). Summarizing this position, McKee writes that although [Kaufman] may use the disorienting techniques of Postmodernism, he draws upon an older, deeper creed. When he plays with randomness and unreliable realities, when he springs the fantasized into the secular, when he fragments time and place, he doesn’t use these devices to express Postmodernism’s indifference to the serious or its facetious scorning of sense and values. No, Kaufman, amazingly, like the luminaries of the Modern, still believes that story has meaning. (ibid)

Also Kaufman’s criticism of contemporary mainstream Hollywood cinema, which is ubiquitous in his films, represents a counterargument to such a postmodernist classification, since it implies the wish for change and, perhaps more importantly, the hope that the situation might ultimately turn out for the better. Although Kaufman’s characters (who, more often than not, represent a mirror to an aspect of the writer’s own self) are trapped in a characteristically postmodern and pessimistic world perpetuated by metareferential structures, they always try to break out, to escape or to create something meaningful, instead of passively resigning to their situation. Moreover, the characters are usually successful, with

97 the exception of Caden in Synecdoche, New York, who ultimately fails in his ambitious undertaking. However, when we consider that the film was originally conceived and written as a horror movie (cf. Synecdoche, New York. The Shooting Script. 2008: 133), it becomes clear that death is not represented as the fundamental proof of life’s meaninglessness, but as a communal fear; A fear, moreover, which cannot exist without hope as its antithesis in hope. The ultimate message, therefore, seems to be that Caden’s failing and death are simply a fact of life, a truth - something which Kaufman is certainly intent on representing in all of his works. Thus, the unifying and perhaps most paradoxical function of metareference throughout Kaufman’s movies is to make his representations of life more truthful and realistic. Like his postmodernist counterparts, however, Kaufman does not aim to postulate an ultimate meaning or truth, instead preferring to let his work speak for itself.

I don’t want to dictate anything. It would be really great for different people to have different experiences, or even for the same person to have different experiences at different times. That’s my goal. If I could accomplish that I would feel like I was doing well. To say that my movie was about searching for hope, or not searching for hope…I’d rather not. (Adaptation. The Shooting Script. 2003: 127)

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