Also known as the matrioska effect, or the chinese box effect, or the Moebius loop and many others...It is a term coined by André Guide, and basically means to put a text within a text (or image). We all have done it, at one point or another, standing between two mirrors and observing our reflection being thrown to the abyss. It has been used in literature for a long long time: a story containing another story containing another story. e.g. The One Thousand and One Nights. It gives a sense of infinite realities linked with the divine. Little realities contained by bigger ones, making us wonder if ours is the highest in jerarchy or we are just the reflection of another one. The philosophical implications of that technique are obvious: the futility of our own existence when it loses its uniqueness. Bound to repeat the same actions over and over and commiting the same mistakes without remission. Welles used it to depict the solitude and infinite fortune of Charles Foster Kane. Lost amongst his uncountable objects, unable to distinguish his self from the image he created of his life. Accompanied only by his own reflection, Kane dies in utter solitude. In other movies like Inception, mise en abîme is no longer a resource to add meaning to the plot, but the plot itself.
This repetition technique has also been used in advertising, with such fortune, it also goes by the name of a chocolate brand. However, my favourite one is La Vache qui rit.
Since it has a very powerfull aesthetical impact, mise en abîme has been used in video-clips since the very begining. Its use spans from what's considered the first video-clip (as we understand them now) Bohemian Rhapsody until today, with videos like Seven Nation Army or, my all time favourite Michel Gondry's video-clip, The Chemical Brothers' Let forever Be.
But what about real life? Has anybody experienced a mise en abîme? I guess dejà vus might count, but unless you have five in a row, the effect would wear off pretty quick. That's when the guys of Improv Everywhere come into place. They pulled a mise en abîme performance at a Starbucks Cafe. The same chain of actions were repeated over and over. People started feeling something funy was going on.
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