MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA

TRANSFORMATION OF THE MEDIA GARDEN
effect by the cause and vice versa) which “in some sense connects the
author with his work or, more widely speaking, connects the originator
of a representation with the representation itself.” 8 By using the term
representation we also cover areas outside of literature, such as painting,
theatre or cinematography.
According to Genette, author’s metalepsis is a rudiment or sketch of
iction or, if we prefer, it is the miraculously working tool the deinition
of which includes a number of not only literary ways of crossing the
border of representation. Its expansion is a process in which we move
from a purely formal and semantically weak degree of an ordinary word
scheme (which we consider a igure of speech) to a semantically strong
degree, where the transfer of meaning creates a type of a “miracle”. On
the level of narrative, this transfer is represented by narrative metalepsis,
which can be described as a form of transfer from one narrative level to
another based on the ignorance of the rules of this transfer by crossing
or breaking the borders between the world in which one speaks and the
world about which one speaks.
Transgressions of the regular order of things, which are the effect of
metalepsis, open up an area of a certain “disturbing strangeness” (we
experience its spontaneous form when we meet someone we usually
only see on a screen in person) in which cinematography goes furthest,
since it has an opportunity for metalepsis which is unknown to narrative
iction. A speciic case is when an actor plays several characters
simultaneously, especially lookalikes. Genette gives the example of
transmedia metalepsis in Hitchcock’s movie Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
and the countless adaptations of The Count of Monte Cristo. There is a
number of opportunities like this in painting as well, namely in the case
of “paintings in paintings”, or in photography. However, they are used
less often than in literature or ilm.
Another case of ignorance or the violation of author’s narration which
is deinitely worth a mention is the reader/recipient. Even in the case
of author’s metalepsis we saw that the author addresses the reader from
time to time. Of course, that is not all. Calvino, Cortázar or Butor go as
far as to turn the reader into a full-ledged ictional character or even
the protagonist of the narrative. Just like in other cases, the metalepsis
here is a type of deception, “simply by changing roles, just like in child
games when one says: And now you’ll be a cashier... We believe it without
8 GENETTE, G.: Métalepse. De la igure à la iction. Paris : Seuil, 2004, p. 12.
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