Fictionality and Directly Informative Relevance

Richard Walsh’s notion of fictionality as rhetoric has undoubtedly had an immeasurable impact on research and teaching in different areas within the humanities. It has given scholars and students in disciplines such as literary studies, media studies, and rhetoric new ways of engaging with fictionality in various types of communication. Walsh’s initial idea of fictionality as a direct communicative resource has generated different approaches to fictionality in the rhetorical vein, and as Walsh points out in the target essay, his characterization of fictionality has become “too specific to represent the whole range of current rhetorical approaches to fictionality” (“Fictionality as Rhetoric” 414).

In this response, I will discuss his characterization of fictionality as “independence from directly informative kinds of relevance” (Walsh, “Fictionality as Rhetoric” 399) in relation to one of three areas for further research suggested in his essay: fictionality beyond fiction. In order to propose perspectives for further dialogue and research regarding the “nature and scope of fictionality” (420) outside fiction, I will use my current work (“Fictional Characters in a Real World”) on unruly fictionalized encounters in Sacha Baron Cohen’s film Borat, Mads Brügger’s documentary The Ambassador, and the Yes Men’s media hoaxes to ask: are all instances of fictionality independent of direct informative relevance? The considerations made in relation to this question point toward other unexplored issues, and I will therefore end my response by suggesting potential next steps in the investigation of fictionality beyond fiction.

Walsh describes fictionality “as a quality of fiction as communication, not a quality of its referent or object of representation” (“Fictionality as Rhetoric” 398). As a media scholar working with complex media texts such as satirical fake news, media hoaxes, and vitafiction, I find that one of the key benefits of the conception of fictionality as a rhetorical strategy is the possibility of attaching fictionality to parts of the communicated message (see also “Paratext,” “Vitafiction as a Mode of Self-Fashioning,” and “Vitafiction and Virality”). Nielsen, Phelan, and Walsh’s recognition that “nonfictionality can be subordinate to fictive purposes, and fictionality can be subordinate to nonfictive purposes” (67) shifts the focus from classification to the functioning of fictionality and proves very helpful in understanding the force of fictionality in forms such as Borat, The Ambassador, and the Yes Men’s media hoaxes. These three cases illustrate the importance of fictionality as rhetoric, but they also entail a specific boundary-crossing interaction between fictional characters and real people, which seems to challenge Walsh’s notion of fictionality as “independence from directly informative kinds of relevance.”

The three cases have social, political, and/or activist aims. The socially provocative character of Borat is used to uncover, for example, homophobic and racist attitudes in the United States. Mads Brügger’s diplomat stereotype Monsieur Cortzen unravels the illegal use of diplomacy for the purpose of smuggling diamonds out of Africa, and the Yes Men, who pretend to be spokesmen for companies such as Shell and Dow, aim to expose these companies’ lack of responsibility for environmental disasters. In all three media texts, fictionalized characters interact with unsuspecting real people who perceive the fictional characters as real. Borat voices radical opinions and thus prompts a group of American fraternity boys to express approval of slavery and a rodeo manager to say that he wants to hang homosexuals. Borat brings a prostitute to a dinner party and thereby forces the otherwise hospitable dinner hosts to send him away. In The Ambassador, Mads Brügger transforms into the diamond-smuggling diplomat Monsieur Cortzen, who buys fake credentials and bribes the government and mine owners in the Central African Republic. In the Dow chemical hoax, the Yes Men succeed in having a fictive representative from Dow Chemicals interviewed by an unsuspecting news host on BBC World. The representative expresses Dow’s willingness to finally take full responsibility and compensate the victims from the Bhopal disaster.

When it comes to Borat and The Ambassador, the viewers of the films immediately recognize Borat and Monsieur Cortzen as fictionalized characters. Thus, fictionality is signaled to the film viewers but kept...