Self-Reflexivity and its Functions in Cinema

Self-reflexivity is a meta-media and meta-reference theory which is defined and discussed in philosophy, psychology, and different forms of art. Though it is not a new concept and we can trace it back to the beginning of the history of art and in the earliest texts, but by the rise of Brecht’s theories, it was theorized and accepted by the researchers; and in the sixties, self-reflexivity turned into the core idea of postmodernism. The most valuable feature of this theory is awareness: the awareness of the spectator facing the art and the awareness of the author in the procedure of creating it, which leads to creativity and distinct functions in these types of works. In any reflective piece of art, the audience is deliberately conscious of all the indications of the art and freely interprets them. SelfReflexivity in cinema includes a vast variety of motion pictures, from the silent era to the present time, which has different attractions and functions based on their course and representation in the history of filmmaking. The intensive variety of reflexivity might even mislead us to this idea that every film is a self-reflexive one, but it is the functionality of reflexive elements which would help us to determine a reflexive film from a non-reflexive one. Reflexivity has developed through time, and by any historical event has taken new forms and distinct functionality. While its approach changes from one kind of art to another kind and from one genre to another genre, reflexivity is much related to its position in the text, and its cultural and social background, and even the orientation of the audience. The main aim of this research is to study the functions of self-reflexivity in films which can make the spectator more attracted to them. This article is a descriptive, analytic, and a qualitative research which has been demonstrated by the library research process. Since there are a lot of different opinions on the meaning and the terminology of self-reflexivity, this study consists of various definitions of self-reflexivity in art, different styles of reflexivity and its dramatic functions in Cinema.