Meta-reference

Meta-reference (or metareference) is a category of self-reference occurring in media or media artifacts such as texts, films, paintings, TV series, comic strips, and video games. It includes all references to, or comments on, a specific medium, media artifact, or the media in general. These references and comments originate from a logically higher level (a "meta-level") within any given artifact, and draw attention to—or invite reflection about—media-related issues (e.g. the production, performance, or reception) of said artifact, specific other artifacts (as in parody), or to parts, or the entirety, of the media system. It is, therefore, the recipient's awareness of an artifact's media quality that distinguishes meta-reference from more general forms of self-reference. Thus, meta-reference triggers media-awareness within the recipient, who, in turn "becomes conscious of both the medial (or "fictional" in the sense of artificial and, sometimes in addition, "invented") status of the work" as well as "the fact that media-related phenomena are at issue, rather than (hetero-)references to the world outside the media." Although certain devices, such as mise-en-abîme, may be conducive to meta-reference, they are not necessarily meta-referential themselves. However, innately meta-referential devices (e.g. metalepsis) constitute a category of meta-references.

History

While meta-reference as a concept is not a new phenomenon and can be observed in very early works of art and media not tied to specific purposes (e.g. Homer's invocation of the muses at the beginning of the Odyssey in order to deliver the epic better), the term itself is relatively new.