Real Fiction: The Recursive Nature of Metatext

Stranger than the hypertext in Stranger than Fiction is the metatext.  As in my previous post, the topic of this moment is recursion, or repeating self-similarities.  Stranger than Fiction provides an eerily clear subject through which to examine this quality in metatext.  The hypertext recursion in film surrounded the idea of similar meanings being presented by the audio, visual, and textual elements of the narrative.  In Stranger than Fiction, these elements directly reflected each other's meanings.  However, if we delve another level deeper, the recursive metatext becomes perceptible.  Self-reference in the film is the key element of its metatext.  The film was created as a fictional narrative about a fictional narrative about a fictional/real individual from a real fictional screenplay.  So, there are approximately five levels on which the narrative exist, possibly many more.  Within the narrative however, we can only closely examine two.  The real fictive existence of Harold Crick and the real fictive creation of Death and Taxes, the novel of Harold Crick's life and seemingly unavoidable and imminent death, serve as these levels.  The film is meta in that these two elements are occurring within the same universal space-time, or frame.  Odder, the narrative is also occurring in the real world as well.  Harold Crick becomes aware of this outside narration of his life and finds the author of his story.  This results in some distortion in the metatextual frame.  The narrative of the book written by the author exists within Harold Crick's existence, but Harold Crick also exists within the narrative of the book written by the author.  This creates an infinite cycle of sorts with infinitely nested realities.  If we view metatext for what it appears to be in Stranger than Fiction, than we can begin to see the recursive metatext in everything.  Stranger than Fiction just provides a clear near-perfectly aligned arrangement for observing metatext.  While in our reality, within texts and perceptions, and through the interconnection of everything in a hypertextual manner, we can see our universe as a metatextual one.  Where at some basic plane of observation, everything can be seen in the same meaning as everything else.  Reality can be recursive, and that is stranger than fiction.