Going Meta

"I see a crimson cloud in the horizon. You tell me it is a mass vapor which absorbs all other rays and reflects the red, but that is nothing to the purpose, for the red vision excites me, stirs my blood, makes my thoughts flow ... and you have not touched the secret of that influence." -Henry David Thoreau

There's a moment in the movie Up in the Air when George Clooney's character and Anna Kendrick's character are having an argument. Clooney is talking about accumulating enough sky miles to join an exclusive club, one of the benefits being his name airbrushed onto an airplane. From memory, here is how the conversation plays out:

Anna Kendrick: "What is it with men always trying to put their name on everything?"
George Clooney: "And why do you think that is?"
AK: "It's probably because you can't have babies."
GC: (in a very condescending tone) "The baby argument."

The argument ends there and the viewer gets the feeling that Clooney won. But why? He simply "went meta." He stepped outside of the conversation and put a label on her argument. Isn't that sidestepping the argument? At best, it's a weak ad hominem attack?

Going meta is something that happens in fiction all the time and it's considered writing for an erudite crowd.

• Tyler Durden tries to free people from their white collar, corporate "slave" jobs in Fight Club. When they join Tyler's "army" they unknowingly become slaves to everything he asks them to do. 
• In Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David is pegged to star in a play with the intent that he will fail and the play will bomb. The producers realized they will make more money if the play is not a success. The play is The Producers, which is essentially the same plot. 
• In Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, the author becomes a character in the book.

Today, we seem to equate a person's ability to "go meta" with intellect. If you don't see this, you are the dumb one. The dummies don't realize they're using the "baby argument." The dummies don't realize how they traded corporate slavery for Tyler Durden slavery. The dummies don't realize the reference to The Producers in Curb Your Enthusiasm.

But what if they're wrong? I admire those who can get so caught up in the moment, so entrenched in pure experience, that they don't allow themselves to be distracted by meta-fictional references.

Because once you step outside the plot or label the argument, you lose it. It becomes a whole different experience where we feel proud of ourselves for identifying the author's clues. We place ourselves in a pseudo-intellectual class, where we are better than those who don't get the joke.

I'm even doing it now as I'm going meta on going meta.