fourth wall

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The fourth wall is the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play. The term also applies to the boundary between any fictional setting and its audience. When this boundary is "broken" (for example by an actor speaking to the audience directly through the camera in a television sitcom), it is called "breaking the fourth wall." This mostly is carried out by the character hinting that they are "aware" of the fact that they are in a TV show or movie.^{[citation needed]}

Origin and meaning

The term was made explicit by Denis Diderot^[1] and spread in nineteenth century theatre with the advent of theatrical realism. Critic Vincent Canby described it in 1987 as "that invisible screen that forever separates the audience from the stage."^[2] Another among early practitioners of this method (now referred to as the "Fourth Wall") is Thornton Wilder & his 1937 play "Our Town". The term "fourth wall" stems from the absence of a fourth wall on a three-walled set where the audience is viewing the production. The audience is supposed to assume there is a "fourth wall" present, even though it physically is not there. This is widely noticeable on various television programs, such as sitcoms, but the term originated in theatre, where conventional three-walled stage sets provide a more obvious "fourth wall". The term "fourth wall" has been adapted to refer to the boundary between the fiction and the audience. "Fourth wall" is part of the suspension of disbelief between a fictional work and an audience. The audience will accept the presence of the fourth wall without giving it any direct thought, allowing them to enjoy the fiction as if they were observing real events.The presence of a fourth wall is one of the best established conventions of fiction and as such has led some artists to draw direct attention to it for dramatic or comedic effect. This is known as "breaking the fourth wall". For instance, in Puckoon, Spike talks to the author multiple times. Spike also at one stage in the book, looks to see what page the reader is on. Besides theatre and cinema, the term has been adopted by other media, such as television, comics, and more recently, video games. Though some table-top roleplaying games do allow for breaking the fourth wall, these are usually beer and pretzel type games.

Breaking the fourth wall

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Theatre

The technique of breaking the fourth wall has been used for millennia and was standard practice in Greek comedy.

At one point in the Greek playwright Aristophanes' play Peace, the hero Trygaeus (who is being lifted into the air by a crane situated offstage) tells the crane-handler to be more careful. The fourth wall didn't actually exist in Greek theatre; even in tragedies many characters spoke directly to the audience, aware of their existence. Most often, the fourth wall is broken by having a character directly address the audience (one example is the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's Our Town, in which three of the "audience" members ask questions that are part of the script and are responded to by the Stage Manager). A similar effect can be achieved by having characters interact with objects outside the context of the work (e.g., a character is handed a prop by a stage hand). Productions of William Shakespeare's plays, which frequently feature asides and soliloquies which the characters in question presumably speak only to themselves, sometimes present the dialogue as being delivered directly to the audience. In Sir Laurence Olivier's 1955 film adaptation of Richard III, Olivier addresses the audience directly, a ground breaking technique in film.

A notable case of Shakespeare breaking the fourth wall is the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which Puck suggests to the audience that they pretend, should they have disliked the play they just saw, that the entire production was only a dream. Sometimes, an actor in a play may physically penetrate the fourth wall. For example, in plays that involve sword (or other melee) fights, such as Romeo and Juliet, fighters may go into the audience. The reasons for doing this are plentiful, but the most obvious reason is that it helps draw the audience into the play. Various artists have used this jarring effect to make a point, as it forces an audience to see the fiction in a new light and to watch it less passively. Bertolt Brecht was known for deliberately breaking the fourth wall to encourage his audience to think more critically about what they were watching, referred to as Verfremdungseffekt ("alienation effect"). Breaking the fourth wall is often employed for comic effect, as a sort of visual non-sequitur; the unexpected departure from normal narrative conventions is often surprising and creates humor. A very early example of this occurs in Francis Beaumont's play The Knight of the Burning Pestle, which contains three characters who are purportedly part of the audience. They frequently interrupt the performance and demand to be consulted on the plot, ordering a number of sudden (and usually extremely awkward) changes throughout the play, with often comical results. Such exploitation of an audience's familiarity with the conventions of fiction is a key element in many works defined as post-modern, which dismantle established rules of fiction. Works which break or directly refer to the fourth wall often utilize other post-modern devices such as meta-reference or breaking character. From the early days of sound motion pictures, stage-to-screen productions often broke this barrier, especially those of the Marx Brothers', most often by having a character look directly into the camera and speak to the audience.

In traditional British pantomime, the audience is encouraged and expected to break the fourth wall by interacting with the cast—booing the villains, who will often respond, cheering the heroes, who will often thank the audience, and by providing hints to the characters as to what to do next, e.g. shouting 'he's behind you' when the villain is sneaking up on the hero, or 'She's in the cellar' when Prince Charming is searching for Cinderella who has been locked in the basement by the Ugly Sisters.

The 1985 Broadway play Drood (originally The Mystery of Edwin Drood) is a musical comedy with a master of ceremonies who speaks directly to the audience. Plus there are three alternate endings and the audience votes for the one they most prefer. In Ionesco's Rhinoceros there is one point when Jean suggests that Berenger go see some plays by Ionesco and there's one going on right now so he should take advantage of it.

Film

Paul (Arno Frisch) smirks at the audience in the film Funny Games, which frequently breaks the fourth wall.

In the 1932 Marx Brothers film Horse Feathers, for example, when Chico sits down at a piano to begin a musical interlude, Groucho turns to the camera and deadpans "I've got to stay here, but there's no reason why you folks shouldn't go out into the lobby until this thing blows over." ^[3] Bob Hope, who also frequently addressed the audience, uses a similar gag in Road to Bali: just as Bing Crosby begins a number, Hope says, "He's gonna sing, folks. Now's the time to go out and get your popcorn."

The 1966 movie Alfie features numerous scenes where Michael Caine, in the titular lead role, turns to the camera and addresses the audience.

In the 1986 comedy film Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Ferris breaks the fourth wall multiple times throughout the film.

The 1988 film Casual Sex? begins with the main characters speaking to the audience, and breaks the fourth wall throughout the movie. Many satirical comedy movies use the fourth wall by calling attention to how absurd or hackneyed certain elements of the plot are.

In Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back the cast at several points asked who would watch a movie based on the titular characters before pausing to stare at the camera.

The movies produced by Mel Brooks often involve a significant breaking of the fourth wall, from a brawl that spreads into the rest of the movie studio in Blazing Saddles to various characters referencing the movie script in Robin Hood: Men In Tights after an unexpected plot twist (specifically, when Robin loses in the archery contest, he finds this strange, takes out a copy of the script and finds that he gets another shot; when Prince John and the Sheriff hear this they take out their own copies of the script and confirm Robin's assertion). Similarly, in the film Spaceballs, when the villains lose track of the protagonists, they obtain a copy of the videotape of the film they are in to discover the heroes' location.

During the Austin Powers series, the character of Austin (played by Mike Myers) deals with a plot inconsistency by simply ignoring it, telling another character "you shouldn't worry too much about that," and adding, directly to the camera, "and neither should you."

In Annie Hall, Diane Keaton's character mistakenly says "wife" instead of "life". Woody Allen's character points this out. She denies it and so he turns to the camera and says "You heard that!"

The technique was arguably first employed in the modern sense in the sensational 1921 premiere of Pirandello's play Sei Personaggi in Cerca d'Autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author), wherein six ordinary people come to the rehearsal of a play to demand that their stories be told as part of the performance.

This type of fourth wall breaking is also used in The Aliens Are Coming! The Aliens Are Coming! when it becomes impossible to tell what is 'real' and what is not in the play, as the aliens end up everywhere.

The fourth wall is sometimes included as part of the narrative, when a character discovers that they are part of a fiction and 'breaks the fourth wall' to make contact with "the real world", as in films like Tom Jones, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1963, Woody Allen's Annie Hall (with Marshall McLuhan) and The Purple Rose of Cairo, Last Action Hero and Jonathan Gash's Lovejoy novels. Both Peter Pan and Captain Hook break the fourth wall in the 1954 musical adaptation of Peter Pan. More recently, in The Simpsons Movie, Homer Simpson, who is watching a movie in the theater, gets up to criticize the film, and consequently breaks the fourth wall by turning to the audience and saying "Everyone in this theater is a giant sucker. Especially you."

Some japanese anime films also occasionally break the fourth wall. At the end of Pokémon: The Movie 2000, for example, Slowking breaks the fourth wall when he tells Team Rocket that they aren't unsung heroes, that the audience knows they helped Ash save the world. (Slowking looks towards the audience and says "Lots of people saw what you did out there. And they're all watching you right now.") In the following film, Meowth breaks the fourth wall when he comments "Maybe we'll get a bigger part in the next movie."

In Fight Club, when the Narrator and Tyler Durden are on the top floor with the bombs about to go off, Tyler asks the Narrator if he has any last words to mark the occasion. The Narrator responds "I still can't think of anything," and Tyler remarks "Ah. Flashback humor," referencing the foreshadowing intro to the film.

Literature

The fourth wall has also been broken in literature such as The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov,^[4] Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth, Midnight's Children and The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie, Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote by Jorge Luis Borges, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino, Travelling People by B.S. Johnson, Double or Nothing by Raymond Federman, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, and The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles, which has the author inserting himself into the story and discussing the possible endings he was considering, thus causing the reader to wonder which ending he would choose.

Another good example is Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, wherein slowly, over the course of the novel, the author begins to step out from behind the curtain of omniscient third-person narrative and reveals her own role as the author of the book which the reader is reading. A good example comes very late in the novel, when the young couple, Catherine and Henry, have been blocked from marrying by Henry's father, General Tilney, who is angrily withholding his consent:

Henry returned to what was now his only home, to watch over his young plantations, and extend his improvements for her sake, to whose share in them he looked anxiously forward; and Catherine remained at Fullerton to cry. Whether the torments of absence were softened by a clandestine correspondence, let us not inquire. Mr. and Mrs. Morland never did -- they had been too kind to exact any promise; and whenever Catherine received a letter, as, at that time, happened pretty often, they always looked another way. The anxiety, which in this state of their attachment must be the portion of Henry and Catherine, and of all who loved either, as to its final event, can hardly extend, I fear, to the bosom of my readers, who will see in the tell-tale compression of the pages before them, that we are all hastening together to perfect felicity. The means by which their early marriage was effected can be the only doubt; what probable circumstance could work upon a temper like the General's?

Comics

Comics can occasionally break the fourth wall, as Marvel Comics characters such as She-Hulk, and Loki are aware that they are comic book characters. In the Marvel Comics of the 1960s, Stan Lee's style of writing regularly broke the fourth wall when writing captions and narration. The Marvel character Deadpool is so well known for his knowledge of being a comic book character that some of the books were advertised with the tagline Deadpool: Breaking down the fourth wall, brick by brick!. Batman's The Joker often addresses the comic reader and has even at times forced his way out of the comic frames to do things such as help turn the page. Animal Man has broken the fourth wall by actually confronting the then-writer of his book, Grant Morrison, about the death of his family.

The comic character Opus is also aware that he is a comic character, and usually consults with the "Creator", Berkeley Breathed, the cartoonist. A particular Peanuts strip found in the book Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schlutz depicts Schroeder playing piano and attaining a perfect pitch. He tells Charlie Brown who tells Schroeder that baseball season is over, to which Schroeder responds by walking off commenting, "Sometimes I think I should put in for a transfer to a new comic strip!"

Several strips in Scott Adam's Dilbert cartoon feature Adams himself trapped inside cubicle hell. While talking to the reader, Adams is breaking the fourth wall (although, as the cartoon is in two dimensions, he refers instead to the "third wall").

Some Japanese Manga also breaks the fourth wall on occasion;for instance, in volume 8 of Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward Elric says that the manga may as well be called 'Armoured Alchemist' after he finds his brother Alphonse has 'outweighed' his importance. In the popular Japanese manga series Bastard‼: Heavy Metal, Dark Fantasy, the characters occasionally give indications that they know they are in a manga.

Television

George Burns commonly addressed the audience in his 1950s TV comedy show, and sometimes even watched it on TV in another room.^[5] Partly inspired by Burns, in 1986 It's Garry Shandling's Show completely obliterated the fourth wall. Shandling and all the other characters in the show were aware that they were characters on a show. They also were aware of and interacted with the studio audience, the cameras filming them, and the home viewers watching them.

The fourth wall is frequently broken in cartoons, often in ways difficult or impossible with live actors. Perhaps one of the most humorous is to "fight the iris": right before the picture ends and while the image is diminished by a contracting circle, a character forces the "eye" open to interject a wry comment or complaint. The character may appear onscreen after the iris is closed, walking or running over a solid black background.

Several classic Looney Tunes cartoons have been known to break the fourth wall. The award-winning cartoon Duck Amuck, for example, breaks the fourth-wall for the entire running-time, with Daffy Duck arguing with the off-screen animator (Bugs Bunny) throughout the cartoon. In The Wabbit Who Came to Supper, Bugs Bunny breaks the fourth wall when he comments "Hey, this scene oughta get me the Academy Award!" In Hair-Raising Hare, Bugs breaks the fourth wall twice: Once when Bugs cries out, "Is there a doctor in the house?" and a silhouette, seemingly from the theater audience, stands up and offers, "I'm a doctor.", and twice when he asks Gossamer "Did you ever have the feeling that you're being watched? That the eyes of strange, eerie things are upon ya? Look, out there in the audience." (Gossamer then shrieks "PEOPLE!" and runs away scared.)

In a similar vein, characters can occasionally be seen in other episodes, running right off the "edge" of the display, leaving them standing in a blank white space, accompanied by a stretch of movie film rolling by along one edge of the screen. In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Donatello decodes a villain's clue as written in latitude and longitude, Raphael makes an aside comment, "And they say cartoons aren't educational." In the Jem episode "The Day The Music Died", the fourth wall is broken at least twice. For instance, Kimber interrupts the episode's opening titles to inform the audience that "there will be no story today." Later in the episode, Riot reassures the audience that an unconscious Jem will be alright, only for Jem to awaken and ask "who are you talking to?"

The 1987 sitcom I Married Dora starring Elizabeth Peña was cancelled after a mere 13 episodes. At the end of the final show, the cast broke out of character, announced that the show had been cancelled, and gathered together on stage for a curtain call in front of its live audience.

Monty Python's Flying Circus often broke the fourth wall with characters speaking to the audience, asking about their lines or commenting on the content of the sketch. The character 'The Colonel' repeatedly stopped sketches because he thought they were too silly and The Spanish Inquisition remark on the movement of the end credits when they are trying to get to court. Another way of breaking the fourth wall is when a character changes a part of the scene; for example, in Chowder, Schnitzel is often instructed by Mung Daal to change the scene when they are running low on time. In another episode, Chowder starts practicing his writing on the screen, until Gazpacho wipes it off. Chowder asks "about that [drawing]", and points to the Cartoon Network watermark. Gazpacho responds "Eh, that one doesn't come off. I've tried." In the February 12, 2009 episode of Chowder, after all the kitchen's money is spent, the characters announce there is no money for animators, at which time the actual real-life voice actors are shown and have to wash cars until they earn enough money for animation once again. One SpongeBob SquarePants episode has a similar method, as SpongeBob is nervous about painting Mr. Krabs' walls and tells himself he will start to work, but it takes about three hours before Patrick says "Can you move it along? I'm running out of time cards." In another episode of SpongeBob Squarepants, while Spongebob is driving a car (usually called a boat in the series), he accidentally runs over the camera. It then turns out to be that Spongebob has ran over a fish (usually the people in the series). In reality shows such as The Real World, breaking the fourth wall can refer to a direct interaction between the cast and crew. Malcolm in Malcolm in the Middle often breaks the fourth wall by talking to the audience as the other characters are unaware of this. Better off Ted also does this throughout the episodes, the same way Malcom in the Middle does it.

Shows aimed at early childhood audiences (like toddlers) almost always break the fourth wall. Programs like Sesame Street and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse often asks the viewers to do things like count, perform bodily motions, sing or answer questions.

Recent Honda television ads have featured Mr. Opportunity "knocking" on the viewer's television screen near the end of the ad, often saying "opportunity is knocking" usually followed by something like "and it's only at your local Honda dealer".

In the television series Saved by The Bell, the character of Zack Morris would occasionally break the fourth wall by saying, "Time out!", making the motion with his hands similar to the "time-out" signal, and, when the action on screen froze, Zack would speak to the audience, usually offering his opinions, although he did once use the "Time Out" to avoid being punched by A.C. Slater.

In the anime Bleach, several characters break the fourth wall in post-episode sketches, usually a character narrates over the next episode preview, but instead of talking about the next episode they make up their own spin-off show, plotline or complain about how they don't get enough screen time (or even no screen time at all). On one occasion a character (Kon) complains in the preview for episode 2 that he isn't introduced until later in the series (episode 6). Ichigo always interrupts them at the last moment, telling him to get on with the preview, but it often turns out they are out of time.

Video games

In the video game Paper Mario:The Thousand-Year Door, a poorly disguised villain speaks to the player, saying, "You there! In front of the TV. Don't tell the red guy who I am!" Similarly, in Super Paper Mario, when Bestovius gives Mario the ability to flip, and Mario does not know what the "A button" is, Bestovius claims that "...the great beings who watch us will understand." In the Gamecube game Animal Crossing, if a player hits the reset button during the game a mole named Mr. Resetti will appear as the player leaves their house and break the fourth wall by telling the player they shouldn't hit the restart button or power off without saving. In the Crash Bandicoot series, various characters often break the fourth wall- in one game, for example, Cortex says that Wrath of Cortex (another Crash title) didn't do as well as they hoped. In the PlayStation video game WWF Attitude, Triple H breaks the fourth wall during gameplay by telling the player to "put down the controller, get off of the couch and get to a gym, fatass.", and a similar message appears upon completion of Tony Hawks Pro Skater, which read "Now get off your couch and go skate!". In Earthbound, the players are asked to write their names down, the player ends up dealing the finishing blow on the final boss (sorta), & in Mother 3, the Rope snake says that thanks to Duster, he is now a major character in the story. Also in Mother 3, Alec, the main charatcer's grandfather, stops briefly for a moment and looks at the screen to tell the player how to perfom a certain action, then he says "Well, Im gonna return to the story now" pointing out that he is aware of his existence as a videogame character. In the Super Nintendo game Ken Griffey Jr.'s Winning Run, the player can cause the home plate umpire to break the fourth wall. When the player controlled team is in the field on defense, remaining completely idle for too long will cause the home plate umpire to stand up, turn around, tap on the glass T.V. screen with a baseball, and say, "Play the game kid!" In Smackdown vs Raw 2010 during the create-a-superstar storyline Santino Marella insults the player character by saying "you're pathetic, you're what some kid would create in a videogame" before turning to the viewer and giving them a cheeky wink. In the Postal 2 addon 'Apocalypse Weekend' the main character, the Postal Dude, breaks the fourth wall repeatedly by commenting certain situations. At the beginning in the hospital a door is closed until a certain task is completed. When running into this door the Postal Dude says: "Either this door is gonna open up later or some level designer fucked up." When arrested by a soldier, he says to him "Don't blame me, blame the kid at the keyboard." Later, when having a halocination, he states that "Some weird game designer was smoking crack." At the end, before the final boss fight - the final boss can be described as a 4 meter tall mix of a humanoid cow and the devil with a human face - the Postal Dude says: "Some totally cracked up game designer on crack must have completely lost his mind..."

Misconceptions

It is a misconception to think that the fourth wall is being broken anytime a character is talking to the audience. In a mockumentary (like The Office) the characters are talking to the camera/audience, but since the plot of the show involves the filming of the documentary and the actors are staying in character, this is not breaking the wall. Another example is a soliloquy in plays: the actors are facing the audience but the characters are just talking to themselves while looking at nothing in particular. In some video games (like the Command & Conquer series) characters are speaking directly to the player (usually in a cut scene), but the player is "acting" as another character and the performers are speaking to that character, not the real-life player.

References

See also

• Fifth wall
• Corpsing
• Gaze
• Kayfabe, a similar concept in professional wrestling
• Descartes' philosophy - The concept of reality itself being illusory.
• Alternate reality game