The second most visited web site globally (surpassed solely by Google’s homepage), YouTube reportedly currently hosts over 14 billion videos, making it by far probably the most consequential shifting picture repository on earth. But, regardless of its unprecedented cultural significance—and regardless of now being virtually twenty years previous—startlingly little dialogue of the platform appears occupied with treating YouTube as an inventive medium. Approaching YouTube as artwork may take many varieties. This essay asks whether or not there is perhaps a spot on YouTube for one creative style that’s develop 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 grew to become very modern 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 sequence (2009-11).
Etymologically a portmanteau of “autobiography” and “fiction,” autofiction is a slippery aesthetic class. I are inclined to agree with those who argue that autofiction is “not a style,” however “an aesthetic gesture or apply or mode.” By way of 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 creator as each … herself and a fictional character, … encouraging confusion between fiction and autobiographical reality.
What are the conventions of autobiography and fiction that autofiction confuses? The thinker Kendall Walton once suggested 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 steadiness of those standard assumptions, particularly as regards the creator’s implied relationship to somebody represented within the work (most normally its protagonist).
YouTube as Autofiction
It’s frankly extraordinary that autofiction and YouTube appear to have seldom been discussed together. I say this partly due to two associated scholarly assumptions which can be usually made in regards to the “performance 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 audience as authentic.” 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 positioning’s preliminary slogan: Broadcast Your self. So, put by way of the conventions that autofiction blurs: it’s normally 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 statement that “authenticity on YouTube does not refer to a reflection of reality without mediation.” As such, probably the most YouTubers’ self-performances can actually hope for is just an “authenticity effect.” This assumption is equally unsurprising, on condition that “authenticity” is maybe probably the most persistently and gleefully debunked idea in media research.
The idea of autofiction appears completely poised to intervene in these debates. There have at all times been YouTubers whose efficiency fashion 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 standard YouTubers have frequently carried out as explicitly fictional characters—say, Fred, Filthy Frank, or Laina Morris’ Overly Attached Girlfriend. Others have depended upon strolling the road between fictional and non-fictional selves—like Nostalgia Critic or Angry 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 most likely be discovered throughout quite a few YouTube genres, I’ll focus right here on one particularly: the YouTube video essay. Largely ostensibly non-fictional and informative, this YouTube style has develop into more and more aesthetically ambitious—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 figure inside these developments within the style: Natalie Wynn, creator of the channel ContraPoints.
ContraPoints and Autofiction
Wynn’s ContraPoints movies have develop into standard 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 deal with monologues about politicized points, drag-ball performance styles, baroque art-direction, and (typically) 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 he or she tends to dramatize dialogues between them partaking in heated seriocomic debates about subjects just like the politics of gender or religion.
Given this partly fictionalized dimension of her YouTube work, it’s most likely unsurprising that, when discussing her movies, Wynn often explicitly defines them in opposition to YouTube’s repute for “authenticity.” She muses that, “in some ways my movies will not be 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 consider that a non-fictional author is addressing us as themselves, autofiction complicates that perception through a simultaneous invitation to think about that “the author [both] is and is not represented by [a] textual surrogate”. In literature, that “surrogate” is normally a story’s protagonist or narrator. On YouTube this characteristically autofictional pressure between perception and creativeness may be leant an additional, embodied dimension: Wynn actually represents each character on display screen, which constantly raises questions on who precisely we’re being requested to think about (or consider) we’re watching at any given second.
The idea of autofiction would possibly assist us admire the work of Wynn and different YouTubers. Nevertheless, this definitely isn’t to say that everyvideo by any YouTuber will usefully be definable as autofictional. To exhibit why, let’s evaluate two ContraPoints movies: “Transtrenders” (2019) and Shame (2020). In each, Wynn embodies somebody popping out as homosexual. The approaching-out video has develop into “a distinctive YouTube form” that exploits the “confessional” fashion so widespread on the platform. I recommend that Disgrace is certainly a coming-out video on this sense, whereas “Transtrenders” shouldn’t be. It’s 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 enjoying explicitly fictional characters. Wynn has said of her work typically that the persona she embodies on YouTube is “primarily based on me, however it’s scripted and … offered on this very stylized context.” However the truth that all ContraPoints movies characteristic a great deal of artifice and theatricality needn’t justify utilizing the time period “fiction” to seek advice from the quite a few movies by which Wynn primarily delivers direct deal with monologues-to-camera as, seemingly, herself. In these movies, she frequently even introduces herself by title (“Hi, 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’s also, 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 affords 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 advised, by having fallen in unrequited love together with her closest feminine good friend.
Disgrace creates a deeply performative and stylized context for Wynn’s direct-address monologue. It takes place throughout multiple 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 selections 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 meant 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, probably the most elementary factor we appear requested to consider by movies like Disgrace precedes something within the contents of what Wynn says. We’re requested to consider one thing in regards to the mode of deal with 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. On condition that invitation to consider, Wynn’s popping out right here is thus meant 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 enjoying an ostensibly fictional character referred to as Justine. “Transtrenders” is one among ContraPoints’ most totally fictional movies, no less than by way of 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 reasonably 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 obtained as such by her followers. That is regardless of who Wynn is enjoying whereas “popping out” right here: Justine, a recurring ContraPoints character, who followers have lengthy accepted as (to cite one commenter on the ContraPoints Reddit page), “the character that feels closest to the creator.” Nonetheless, the truth that she is conceptualized as a personality, not the creator herself, stays necessary.
In “Transtrenders”, which is a narratively complicated video, Wynn performs not solely Justine but additionally Justine’s frenemy Tiffany, and a quasi-diegetic host character referred to as the Digital Messiah, who serves as a form of Greek refrain, interjecting often to remark upon the video’s fictional occasions from a quasi-Godlike perspective. The second of Justine’s coming-out includes 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 accordance with that timeline, “Transtrenders” was made after she got here to that realization. So, on reflection, 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 modifying—this confession wasn’t fairly interpretable as a “personal confession” in any respect.
As we’d count on, the similarities between what Justine goes by means of in “Transtrenders” and the experiences Wynn recounts in Disgrace had 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 “seem[ing] very real,” but additionally—crucially—that Justine stays (within the phrases of one commenter) the character that’s “closest to the creator, to the purpose I’ve typically not realized that she’s been in character for stretches of sure movies.” It appears clear that what these followers are acknowledging in colloquial type is consciousness exactly of the characteristically hybrid act of creativeness invited by autofiction, by which “the author [is] both … herself and a fictional character.”
From Autofiction to Non-Fiction
Autofiction is subsequently a helpful idea for understanding no less than sorts of self-performance in YouTube; however it has additionally been necessary to distinction it in opposition to its extra standard counterpart: non-fiction. In an excellent video essay about ContraPoints, the YouTuber Sarah Zedig observes that, since Wynn herself performs each character in her movies, it’s “principally … unimaginable for the viewers to neglect that these are fragments of Natalie Wynn.” Nevertheless, by shifting between totally different modes of deal with, Wynn is nonetheless ready both to totally imbue her efficiency with or distance it from the default “appearance 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 beneficial partly as a result of it could assist us assume extra exactly in regards to the many attainable sorts of “performance 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 unimaginable. 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 “performance of the self is just as … “theatrical” and “artistic” in ordinary life as it is in fine art.” Autofiction would possibly assist us see why this acquainted media principle transfer—whereas tempting—is in the end misguided.
Such a blanket postmodern understanding of self-performance undermines our capability to know autofiction. It additionally erases the potential to attract a significant distinction between the invites of ostensible non-fiction to consider,and the invites of ostensible fiction—like a works of theatre, or conventionally fictional movies—to think about. Or, put by way of 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 screen performing, 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 is dependent upon the meaningfulness of these conventions within the first place. In spite of everything, if each self-narration had been equally fictional, there could be no want to tell apart autofiction from wholesale fiction, nor certainly autobiography, in any respect.
We will’t admire an autofictional mode of self-performance like Wynn’s except we’re additionally keen to acknowledge the ever-present chance of her using various 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 may be aesthetically exhilarating. However for us to collapse them will depart us unable to understand the aesthetic specificity—and the creative 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 creator of Irony in Movie (2016) and Joyful 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.
