Uber Text Options

[Freond]

Chris Jones, the Chicago Tribune theater critic, is fond of the term "uber text." I have a guess as to what this term may mean, but I'll hold off sharing it for now so as not to influence anyone else. The dictionaries have been of little help. I do know that uber is the German word for over.

Here are two examples:

"Palin has turned into the ubertext of every female comedian in America."

In a review of Odets' Awake and Sing, a play about a dysfunctional family set in the late '30s and early '40s, he says, "Back then, people were in it together. To a point. The struggling Bronx family in this uber text of in-your-face American acting probably saw more of its neighbors out on the street than the average banker."

Can anyone provide a good discussion of the meaning of "ubertext" and the proper spelling? The Trib printed it as shown in the quotes (two different ways).

[Osea]

"Palin has turned into the ubertext of every female comedian in America." The epitome of source material. . . .

In a review of Odets' Awake and Sing, a play about a dysfunctional family set in the late '30s and early '40s, he says, "Back then, people were in it together. To a point. The struggling Bronx family in this uber text of in-your-face American acting probably saw more of its neighbors out on the street than the average banker." Greatest example of, non-pareil example of, metaexample. . . .

I'm not sure I'm providing a good discussion, but those are my thoughts. It appears the text part doesn't mean "text" so much as "example," "paradigm" (I looked the latter up and am still not sure if I'm using it correctly; I think I'm using it as it has been (mis-) used of late). So übertext (most of the sites I looked at have it as one word) to me suggests the model above all other models, the prime example of something, the top of the heap of things in its class.

[Freond]

Good ideas, there, Osea. They makes a little more sense that what I was thinking. I'll still hold off on my original guess: I hope I hear from others.

[Pheasance]

It seems to mean "theme" or "motif" here. I haven't heard the term before. But "text" would be nonliteral, as in subtext (or untertext, for our German friends!).

[Freond]

It seems to mean "theme" or "motif" here. I haven't heard the term before. But "text" would be nonliteral, as in subtext (or untertext, for our German friends!).

And then there's:

ur·text (ûr'těkst', ōōr'-)
n. The original text, as of a musical score or a literary work.
[German : ur-, original; see Ursprache + Text, text (from Middle High German, from Late Latin textus); see text.]
ur- a combining form meaning “earliest, original,” used in words denoting the primal stage of a historical or cultural entity or phenomenon: ur-civilization; urtext; from Ur –noun; an ancient Sumerian city on the Euphrates, in S Iraq: extensive excavations, esp. of royal tombs.

[rvw]

Voice-over, or closed-caption commentary?

[Subordinate Claw...]

Subtext: "Ay-ay, Cap'n. Takin' her down to 40 fathoms!"

[Freond]

Voice-over, or closed-caption commentary?

That makes sense, but I don't think it works in these contexts.

My guess was that it's a term that contrasts with subtext.

You hear a discussion going on, but what the author is really talking about is the subtext. Wikipedia has an article that includes:

Subtext is content underneath the spoken dialogue....A scene in Woody Allen's movie Annie Hall, in which subtitles explain the characters' inner thoughts during an apparently innocent conversation, is an example of the subtext of a scene being made explicit.

So my thought was that the somewhat superficial dialogue which you do hear, might be the ubertext. In the Annie Hall example, the innocent conversation actually spoken might be the ubertext.

I think that guess fits well with Jones' use of the term in Awake and Sing, but perhaps not for the Sarah Palin comment.

Based on your input, I'm coming up with something in between Pheas' and Osea's thoughts. It's not necessarily the greatest example, but it's the overriding theme or exemplar that governs, influences or informs any treatment of the subject that comes after it.

Any comedy sketch of a female politician now has to include winking, simplistic comments, dropped -g's from -ing words, comments about seeing something from your house, and at least one "you betcha."

Any play about dysfunctional families now has to include elements from the treatment shown in Awake and Sing: son yearning to break free, daughter secretly pregnant and resisting Mom's matchmaking; weak, worthless father, rich factory-owning uncle, and Marxist grandfather. (Author Odets gave names to HUAC, BTW.) The mother in the play exhibits just about every cliched element of a Jewish mother. At intermission, I found myself hoping one of her children would shoot her, so that the play could have a happy ending. Then I realized what an absolutely incredibly, pitch-perfect and powerful performance the actress was giving us, to move me to that; she got my loudest applause.

Thanks to all for your input.

=====
I think we're witnessing the birth of a new English word.

I just did another, more extensive Google search and found some additional references, which I'm going to store here for future reference. There's a software package by this name that clutters up the searches. Maybe I'll submit this research to the OED, if they haven't covered it yet. Don't bother to read them unless you are REALLY interested in how this word is being used. These are my research notes, perhaps of some marginal value or interest, therefore posted publicly.

http://gadgetopia.com/post/6360
I'm not sure exactly what this long article is about, but the"content pages" seem to be some sort of style sheet for pages in some sort of document storage system. My definition seems to fit the use of "uber-text." It seems like "paradigm" would fit as well. I'm not sure why we need this new word.

http://www.lcdpu.fr/onix/?isbn=9782864809722
This book has one essential aim: to question the status of the über-text - the paperback novel, poem or play that we teach in our classrooms and that we make students believe is, in its finality, an immutable work of art. Such has traditionally been the perspective in French universities where English Departments privilege the close reading of some conceptual 'super' or 'over' text, authenticated by Penguin and marketed by Amazon. Frequently neglected in pedagogy and literary criticism, however, is the ur-text, the 'original' text or texts that has or have played a significant role in achieving the über-text that we value so strongly.
--Hmm, this fits Osea's thoughts pretty closely.

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/jo...38.3.booth.html
With websites that facilitate hypertextual and multilinear narratives, and with cinematic representations of narrative meaning, it becomes important to examine changes in mediated narrative structure, so that we can start to understand changes that happen in our conception of our selves. To illustrate this, I examine the narrativity of the Donnie Darko uber-text through a comparison of the website < www.donniedarko.com > to the film Donnie Darko.Fro
--Huh? Maybe the literal text as opposed to subtext or urtext?

http://oreilly.com/catalog/mappinghks//
A lot of what we get here for review are dry, academic texts, technical manuals and stuff like that. But Mapping Hacks is none of those things: it's a guide to extreme map geekery for the cartonerds of the world, a über-text for GIS analysts, programmers and anyone else interested in mapping or geographic imaging. In short, its purely awesome.
--Osea's epitome idea?

http://www.theconglomerate.org/2006/11/ian_macneil_on_.html
Litigators pay careful attention to their opponents' footnotes and, in turn, wield footnotes as a weapon in their own briefs.
Probably the most common practice is to devote the uber-text of a brief to your own arguments, while delivering an unrelenting subtext through a series of footnotes that declares: "The other side is lying to you, Your Honor."
--Fits my original thought.

This applies to bookbinding, I think:
http://cool.conservation-us.org/byform/mai...1/msg00127.html
Shoddy and haphazard work will express that - but in relation to..? Forgive me using a worn out slogan, but does the medium meet the message? Does the carrier of the text become one with the text. Much like the fine adorning of bibles and collections of literature, the carrier is there to inform you to the value or 'fine work' of the content. It marries with the text by proxy, while informing the greater "uber text" of - what the book is, who wrote it, the quality of the writing, the quality of the message, it's importance to culture and society etc. Similarly, broken down structures can aid you to express some kind of pathos, humility and subtlety. It can be used to define a political stance, an aesthetic stance ie. a moral or ethical stance. It just depends on where you are coming from as an author/artist first.
--Seems to just mean "actual, literal text," compared with the text and its trappings as an expression of the bookbinder's craft.

http://www.thetriangle.org/messageboard/in...ef-a954fb143bfc
What's with the uber-text? [Message board post caption]
Come on guys, seriously. Who needs 24-point, Arial-Black text blocks? Go back to the simple text sizes and fonts the way it was before. This is all a bit cartoonish.
--more like slang than actual usage. Found another similar reference, referring to a post in an oversized font. A step beyond using caps to yell on a message board. Just a complaint about large imposing type. Means "text on steroids or supertext," analogous to "ubermensch or superman."