When Metadrama Is Turned into Metafilm: A Media-Comparative Approach to Metareference

Assuming that the study of adaptations of metaworks helps to develop and shape metareference as a transgeneric and transmedial concept, the present article focuses on the rare instances in which metadrama has become (meta)film. Attention is drawn to the fact that, in the change from one medium to the other, processes of both transformation and transposition occur. They serve as keys to the media-comparative research into the relationship of (meta)drama and (meta)film. Tom Stoppard's adaptation of his own "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" exemplifies an intermedial transposition of metadrama into film, resulting in a metadramatic
film. Alain Resnais' two films "Smoking" and "No Smoking", which adapt Alan Ayckbourn's "Intimate Exchanges" for the cinema screen, illustrate a media-specific transformation. The media-comparative point of view of these analyses points to salient perspectives and limits of a transgeneric and transmedial approach to metareference in the arts and media.

ISBN:978-90-420-2670-4

Publication year:2009

Keywords:metaeference, self-reflexivity, metadrama, metafilm