Metafiction

In The Cabin in the Woods the metafiction is clear in that the horror story is completely fabricated by a company that has to make sacrifices to some mysterious groups called the “ancients.” The meta aspect of the movie reminds me of the show Community, which is a sitcom that often makes fun of sitcom tropes by featuring them on the show and dissecting them. Much of the humor in Community is meta-humor and I think it is often done to show the ridiculousness of sitcom tropes. These formulaic ideas make us think about why these reoccur in so many movies and TV shows or how odd they would seem in actual life. Like in The Cabin in the Woods there’s the typical jock, the blonde, the virgin, the jock’s friend, and a quirkier, paranoid character. The difference is that in the film the characters are forced to play these roles. It is odd to think that the film is just fiction about fiction or has humor about humor. I think it is interesting to me to think about do we decide to repeat these types of fiction or jokes or is that just sort of innate way that we tell stories. I suppose it is just a commentary on culture and how our own storytelling has evolved.