Metalepses in Animation

In a video essay that is both highly informative and unpretentious, Daniel P. Alava tackles the concept of metalepsis. If you don’t know what that means, don’t panic. Alava explains it in a way that is much more comprehensible than Werner Wolf’s academic definition (which he affectionately pokes fun at in this essay).

 

This video is an impressive introduction into the many ways different fictional levels within an animated movie can interact. It uses of one of the strengths of the video essay: making academic concepts more accessible and intelligible by immediately providing illustrative clips. Alava has dug up a wealth of such explanatory excerpts, in movies dating from the 1910s to the 2010s.