Rhizomes, Hypertext, and Metapictures! Oh My!

Similar to rhizomes and hypertext, metapictures are more like maps in the sense that there is no tracing, no center, just open to interpretation where the reader follows the path they want to follow. What do I mean by open to interpretation? Well, although a metapicture may be self-reflective, there are various possibilities of what an image could mean and there are various ways of reaching that meaning. For example, the most obvious would be to observe the image alone. That’s where the possibilities are really endless because it’s all up to you. You have to try to find viable allusions. But, if you read a text of words describing the image, then the answer is right in front of your face and you don’t have to exert your critical thinking skills as much. Thus this option of reading a descriptive text is narrower and focuses on just one “correct” answer.

Take Steinberg’s metapicture on page 39 of Mitchell’s “Metapictures” for example. What did you first think it meant? You probably thought of something relatively different than what it was described as on the following page. And that is fine, because the reading then goes on to say that instead of the sublime image Steinberg describes it as from the insides, it is also seen as the complete opposite from the outside: a ridiculous New Yorker cartoon. Like Wittgenstein, even though he was specifically talking about the Duck-Rabbit metapicture, I believe that we should just listen to the words that come out of our mouths while we ponder instead of explicitly trying to explain (Mitchell, 61).