Reflexivity

Chez Buce is enjoying a readaloud of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. I defer comment until we finish, except for the brief observation that it is coffee-through-the-nostrils funny, and intentionally so. And this:

His voice was the elaborately casual voice of the tough guy in pictures. Pictures have made them all like that.

Ah, a favorite theme of mine: art imitates life imitates art. I remember being in Canterbury Cathedral a few years back for a Christmas music service. There was a canon (I guess) who looked for all the world like he stepped right out of Mawsterpiece Theatre. I had to wonder: was MT imitating the canon? Or did the canon get his job because he looked the part?

We've all heard about how mobsters study CD's of The Godfather or The Sopranos to get the right effect. I guess the only thing new is the insight that it's not new: evidently Chandler understood it in 1939.