Metalepsis in Film and Its Implications

This chapter concentrates on the rhetorical figure of metalepsis as an important example of the ways that the two senses of confusion distinguished in the prospectus can intersect in narrative films. In film, metalepsis refers to situations in which ontological layers that "should not" be able to intersect nevertheless do so, such as when Buster Keaton enters the cinema screen in Sherlock Jr. (1924). The theory of metalepsis, and what it helps reveal about the ontology of fiction, are explored largely by means of French theory and philosophy (Genette; Souriau). Finally, it is argued that metalepsis can serve as an important reminder that questions about a film's rhetoric – the way it addresses the viewer – can not always be neatly separated from its diegesis. Diegetic status (e.g. whether an event is "real" within the fictional world, or instead a dream, fantasy, or memory) is not a "fact" but a product of a film's rhetoric.