How Autofiction, the Buzzy Literary Class, Helps Us Make Sense of YouTube

The second most visited web site globally (surpassed solely by Google’s homepage), YouTube reportedly at the moment hosts over 14 billion movies, making it by far essentially the most consequential transferring picture repository on earth. But, regardless of its unprecedented cultural significance—and regardless of now being nearly twenty years outdated—startlingly little dialogue of the platform appears serious about treating YouTube as a creative medium. Approaching YouTube as artwork might take many kinds. This essay asks whether or not there is likely to be a spot on YouTube for one inventive style that’s change into more and more influential within the twenty-first century, particularly in literature: autofiction.

What Is Autofiction?

Coined in 1977 by the French novelist and theorist Serge Doubrovsky, autofiction turned very trendy all through the 2000s and 2010s. The time period has been utilized to all kinds of literary works, from self-defined autofictions like Veronique Tadjo’s Far From my Father (2010), through ostensible novels like Rachel Cusk’s Define trilogy (2014-2018), to memoirs like Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), and “autobiographical novels” like Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Battle collection (2009-11).

Etymologically a portmanteau of “autobiography” and “fiction,” autofiction is a slippery aesthetic class. I are likely to agree with those that argue that autofiction is “not a style,” however “an aesthetic gesture or observe or mode.” When it comes to what that gesture consists of, one characterization I discover usefully broad is that this, from literary scholar Dervila Cooke:

Autofiction … combines the conventions of autobiography with these of fictional writing, and presents the writer as each … herself and a fictional character, … encouraging confusion between fiction and autobiographical truth.

What are the conventions of autobiography and fiction that autofiction confuses? The thinker Kendall Walton as soon as urged that the contents of fictional narratives ask to be imagined, whereas these of non-fictional narratives ask to be believed. Autofiction blurs and complicates the soundness of those standard assumptions, particularly as regards the writer’s implied relationship to somebody represented within the work (most often its protagonist).

YouTube as Autofiction

It’s frankly extraordinary that autofiction and YouTube appear to have seldom been mentioned collectively. I say this partly due to two associated scholarly assumptions which can be usually made concerning the “efficiency of the self” related to YouTube.

On the one hand, there’s an entrenched assumption that YouTubers attempt to current themselves to their audiences as their “actual selves”—that’s: “non-fictional self-presentations … perceived by an viewers as genuine.” This, it’s claimed, displays the so-called “ideology of authenticity” governing YouTube efficiency and its reception. It’s wholly unsurprising that assumptions like this could exist, given the kinds of “discourses of authenticity” related to YouTube, together with the location’s preliminary slogan: Broadcast Your self. So, put when it comes to the conventions that autofiction blurs: it’s often assumed that self-performance on YouTube comes a lot nearer to the conventions of autobiography than to these of fiction.

But, however, YouTube students usually emphasize that the performative and mediatized nature of YouTube self-performance essentially outcomes solely in a “faked” authenticity. Students usually place nice significance on the remark that “authenticity on YouTube doesn’t seek advice from a mirrored image of actuality with out mediation.” As such, essentially the most YouTubers’ self-performances can really hope for is just an “authenticity impact.” This assumption is equally unsurprising, provided that “authenticity” is maybe essentially the most persistently and gleefully debunked idea in media research.

The idea of autofiction appears completely poised to intervene in these debates. There have all the time been YouTubers whose efficiency model can’t be accounted for within the slightest by the platform’s so-called “ideology of authenticity” (and never simply quasi-hoaxes like Lonelygirl15). Since YouTube’s earliest days, many well-liked YouTubers have commonly carried out as explicitly fictional characters—say, Fred, Filthy Frank, or Laina Morris’ Overly Hooked up Girlfriend. Others have depended upon strolling the road between fictional and non-fictional selves—like Nostalgia Critic or Indignant Videogame Nerd; or between pointedly exaggerated personas and characters, like DaxFlame, CopperCab, or MemeMolly. And that is with out even mentioning extra self-consciously experimental YouTube efficiency artists like Poppy, or Maya Ben David. Between these and lots of different strategies of complicating the road between non-fictional autobiography and fictional characters, there appears a lot potential for autofictional YouTube efficiency.

Whereas autofiction can in all probability be discovered throughout quite a few YouTube genres, I’ll focus right here on one specifically: the YouTube video essay. Largely ostensibly non-fictional and informative, this YouTube style has change into more and more aesthetically formidable—particularly inside the orbit of a casual grouping of explicitly left-wing video essayists, which has been dubbed “LeftTube” by its followers. One YouTube video essaysist has been a key determine inside these developments within the style: Natalie Wynn, creator of the channel ContraPoints.

ContraPoints and Autofiction

Wynn’s ContraPoints movies have change into well-liked each for his or her witty political/philosophical analyses of on-line tradition and their distinctive aesthetic: a comic book, extremely stylized, irreverently trans-queer mixture of direct handle monologues about politicized points, drag-ball efficiency kinds, baroque art-direction, and (generally) explicitly fictional characters. These characters embody figures like Freya the Fascist, a parodic Nazi caricature of the alt-right; the brilliantly named trans-exclusionary radical feminist Abigail Cockbane; and Tiffany Tumbles, a Trump-loving, self-hating trans influencer. All characters featured on the channel are embodied by Wynn herself, and she or he tends to dramatize dialogues between them participating in heated seriocomic debates about subjects just like the politics of gender or faith.

Given this partly fictionalized dimension of her YouTube work, it’s in all probability unsurprising that, when discussing her movies, Wynn sometimes explicitly defines them in opposition to YouTube’s popularity for “authenticity.” She muses that, “in some ways my movies are usually not within the spirit of YouTube,” which typically assumes “authenticity, or the looks ofit.” Within the under video, she speaks at a creators’ convention, outlining her method:

A YouTuber who conceives of her work on this method is ripe for dialogue in relation to autofiction. If an autobiography (or, in Wynn’s metaphor, a “diary”) historically asks us to imagine {that a} non-fictional writer is addressing us as themselves, autofiction complicates that perception through a simultaneous invitation to think about that “the writer (each) is and isn’t represented by (a) textual surrogate”. In literature, that “surrogate” is often a story’s protagonist or narrator. On YouTube this characteristically autofictional rigidity between perception and creativeness might be leant an additional, embodied dimension: Wynn actually represents each character on display, which repeatedly raises questions on who precisely we’re being requested to think about (or imagine) we’re watching at any given second.

The idea of autofiction may assist us recognize the work of Wynn and different YouTubers. Nonetheless, this definitely isn’t to say that everyvideo by any YouTuber will usefully be definable as autofictional. To display why, let’s evaluate two ContraPoints movies: “Transtrenders” (2019) and Disgrace (2020). In each, Wynn embodies somebody popping out as homosexual. The approaching-out video has change into “a particular YouTube kind” that exploits the “confessional” model so widespread on the platform. I counsel that Disgrace is certainly a coming-out video on this sense, whereas “Transtrenders” will not be. It is because solely Disgrace sees Wynn articulating her identification in a non-fictional mode, whereas “Transtrenders” depicts her doing so utilizing an autofictional mode.

In some movies Wynn performs as characters outlined explicitly as fictional (like Freya the fascist or Abigail Cockbane), however in lots of others Wynn manifestly isn’t taking part in explicitly fictional characters. Wynn has stated of her work typically that the persona she embodies on YouTube is “based mostly on me, but it surely’s scripted and … offered on this very stylized context.” However the truth that all ContraPoints movies function a great deal of artifice and theatricality needn’t justify utilizing the time period “fiction” to seek advice from the quite a few movies through which Wynn primarily delivers direct handle monologues-to-camera as, seemingly, herself. In these movies, she commonly even introduces herself by identify (“Hello, I’m Natalie Wynn…”), earlier than happening to debate particular incidents from her life. Viewers thus appear invited to know these as real self-narrations: non-fictional claims about her non-fictional self—nevertheless performatively these claims could also be articulated, which is commonly very performatively certainly. Disgrace is one such video.

Disgrace

Disgrace represents Wynn’s precise (that’s, non-fictional) announcement of her sexuality to her viewers. On this forty-two-minute video essay, Wynn analyzes subjects like transgender self-loathing, internalized homophobia, and “obligatory heterosexuality.” But it is usually, as Wynn instantly and sardonically acknowledges, an instance of that conventionally non-fiction style: the coming-out video. Right here’s a clip from that video’s opening:

Following this, Wynn presents a direct-address monologue structured round her personal private narrative of shamefully repressing, wrestling with, then belatedly embracing her identification as a trans lesbian—prompted, we’re instructed, by having fallen in unrequited love together with her closest feminine buddy.

Disgrace creates a deeply performative and stylized context for Wynn’s direct-address monologue. It takes place throughout a couple of fastidiously constructed set, expressively dressed and lit. It additionally prominently foregrounds thematically related props and mise-en-scène: a statue of the Biblical Eve, for example, trying to cover her face and nakedness together with her arms. Later, a second set depicts one other ostentatiously metaphorical backdrop, this time overflowing with tumbling flowers and greenery—evoking a Pre-Raphaelite Eden. Underlining the topic of disgrace typically, these Edenic allusions additionally satirically reappropriate a Christian mythology so usually wielded in opposition to LGBTQ communities—exactly to induce this titular disgrace. Wynn’s choices about costuming are equally thematically motivated: lurching between extremes of modesty and nakedness, her apparel too aesthetically reinforces the video’s central theme. By persistently and self-consciously utilizing methods of symbolism, thematic metaphor, and satire, these stylistic gestures are plainly supposed to be understood performatively and appreciated aesthetically.

But, regardless of all this stylization (and however Wynn maybe personally concerning movies like Disgrace as depicting “a form of fictional character”), neither fiction nor autofiction appear appropriate descriptions for this video. Recalling Walton’s concept that non-fictional narratives ask to be believed, essentially the most basic factor we appear requested to imagine by movies like Disgrace precedes something within the contents of what Wynn says. We’re requested to imagine one thing concerning the mode of handle she is utilizing: that this YouTuber, who seems to be addressing us as herself, actually is doing exactly that. This doesn’t require believing {that a} YouTube performer is one way or the other not performing. It merely requires believing that the video represents one acquainted form of efficiency: a “efficiency of the self” (with all of the complexities this suggests). Disgrace is an particularly stylized occasion of this type of efficiency, however that doesn’t forestall it from encouraging this type of perception. Provided that invitation to imagine, Wynn’s popping out right here is thus supposed as a real announcement of her identification, designed to be appreciated by her viewers as such.

“Transtrenders”

In contrast, in “Transtrenders,” launched seven months prior, when Wynn comes out, she does so whereas taking part in an ostensibly fictional character known as Justine. “Transtrenders” is certainly one of ContraPoints’ most totally fictional movies, not less than when it comes to its aesthetic conventions. It’s populated purely by fictional characters and filmed largely in shot-reverse shot dialogue sequences. It options no moments of Wynn talking to digicam as herself, within the method of Disgrace.

By aesthetically framing its contents as fictional—primarily inviting our creativeness fairly than our perception—the truth that a personality Wynn performs comes out on this video appears to have been neither conceived as a coming-out, nor acquired as such by her followers. That is regardless of who Wynn is taking part in whereas “popping out” right here: Justine, a recurring ContraPoints character, who followers have lengthy accepted as (to cite one commenter on the ContraPoints Reddit web page), “the character that feels closest to the writer.” However, the truth that she is conceptualized as a personality, not the writer herself, stays necessary.

In “Transtrenders”, which is a narratively complicated video, Wynn performs not solely Justine but in addition Justine’s frenemy Tiffany, and a quasi-diegetic host character known as the Digital Messiah, who serves as a form of Greek refrain, interjecting sometimes to remark upon the video’s fictional occasions from a quasi-Godlike perspective. The second of Justine’s coming-out entails all these characters—being prompted by Tiffany, confirmed by the Digital Messiah, then lastly owned as much as by Justine:

In Disgrace, Wynn itemizes a reasonably exact timeline for her realization that she was homosexual. In response to that timeline, “Transtrenders” was made after she got here to that realization. So, looking back, it appears to signify a chance for Wynn to experiment with a coming-out video, with out enacting it within the mode of non-fictionthat coming-out movies invariably assume. Put one other method: ensconced inside ostensibly fictional narration—assured through aesthetic gestures like ostentatious fictional characters and classical shot-reverse shot enhancing—this confession wasn’t fairly interpretable as a “private confession” in any respect.

As we would count on, the similarities between what Justine goes by way of in “Transtrenders” and the experiences Wynn recounts in Disgrace have been famous by followers. On the ContraPoints sub-Reddit, for example, we see commenters writing that, following Disgrace, “Transtrenders” now both strikes them as “foreshadowing” or “feels prophetic”; Justine’s popping out is now described as “appear(ing) very actual,” but in addition—crucially—that Justine stays (within the phrases of 1 commenter) the character that’s “closest to the writer, to the purpose I’ve generally not realized that she’s been in character for stretches of sure movies.” It appears clear that what these followers are acknowledging in colloquial kind is consciousness exactly of the characteristically hybrid act of creativeness invited by autofiction, through which “the writer (is) each … herself and a fictional character.”

From Autofiction to Non-Fiction

Autofiction is due to this fact a helpful idea for understanding not less than sorts of self-performance in YouTube; but it surely has additionally been necessary to distinction it in opposition to its extra standard counterpart: non-fiction. In a superb video essay about ContraPoints, the YouTuber Sarah Zedig observes that, since Wynn herself performs each character in her movies, it’s “mainly … unattainable for the viewers to overlook that these are fragments of Natalie Wynn.” Nonetheless, by shifting between totally different modes of handle, Wynn is nonetheless ready both to totally imbue her efficiency with or distance it from the default “look of non-fiction” related to YouTube. She mobilizes that default assumption to some extent in a single video, to a distinct extent in one other. Autofiction is one aesthetic gesture that this continuous shifting between modes has led her to make use of; however it’s essential to acknowledge it as one amongst many.

The idea of autofiction is helpful partly as a result of it might assist us suppose extra exactly concerning the many potential sorts of “efficiency of the self”—on YouTube or elsewhere. As we’ve seen, media students usually perceive “genuine” self-performance on YouTube in a paradoxical but singular style: as one thing YouTubers incessantly attempt for, but which stays inevitably unattainable. This usually leads them to make a conceptual leap that’s familiarly postmodern: from an acknowledgement of the essentially carried out or performative nature of the self, to the view that any “efficiency of the self is simply as … “theatrical” and “inventive” in strange life as it’s in advantageous artwork.” Autofiction may assist us see why this acquainted media idea transfer—whereas tempting—is in the end misguided.

Such a blanket postmodern understanding of self-performance undermines our skill to know autofiction. It additionally erases the potential to attract a significant distinction between the invites of ostensible non-fiction to imagine,and the invites of ostensible fiction—like a works of theatre, or conventionally fictional movies—to think about. Or, put when it comes to efficiency: between the on a regular basis social efficiency, or performativity, theorized by figures like Erving Goffman and Judith Butler, and the representationalperformance theorized by students of display appearing, like James Naremore. In contrast, exactly as a result of autofiction self-consciously performs with blurring the traditional boundaries of fiction and non-fiction, its very existence as a coherent idea relies on the meaningfulness of these conventions within the first place. In any case, if each self-narration have been equally fictional, there could be no want to tell apart autofiction from wholesale fiction, nor certainly autobiography, in any respect.

We will’t recognize an autofictional mode of self-performance like Wynn’s except we’re additionally prepared to acknowledge the ever-present risk of her using different modes. Key amongst these is the mode that’s most attribute of YouTube: not “genuine” efficiency (no matter this implies) however merely non-­fictional efficiency. For performers to blur these distinctions might be aesthetically exhilarating. However for us to collapse them will depart us unable to understand the aesthetic specificity—and the inventive curiosity—of what some YouTubers are doing on and with the platform.

James MacDowell is Affiliate Professor of Movie & Tv Research on the College of Warwick. The writer of Irony in Movie (2016) and Comfortable Endings in Hollywood Cinema (2013), his present analysis focuses on the aesthetics of YouTube. He makes video essays for his YouTube channel The Lesser Feat.