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. 4 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. 6 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). 7 One such device frequently encountered in metareferential works is the mise- en-abyme.