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Fourth wall

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Specifically in a proscenium theater, the term fourth wall applies to the imaginary invisible wall at the front of the stage in a theater through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play. In an arena theater, or theater-in-the-round, all four walls are in effect "fourth walls." One also speaks of a fourth wall in fictional realms, in literature, movies, television, radio, comic books, and other forms of entertainment. While the origin of the term cannot be confirmed, the concept is generally presumed to have begun in the twentieth century with the advent of theatrical realism.

The term "breaking the fourth wall" is used in film, theater, television, and literary works; it refers to a character directly addressing an audience, or actively acknowledging (through breaking character or through dialogue) that the characters and action going on is not real.

The sudden breaking of the fourth wall is often employed for humorous effect, although opinions differ widely as to how "humorous" this is. Some regard breaking the fourth wall suddenly so jarring that it actually detracts from a story's humor. However, when employed consistently throughout a story for narrative effect, it is usually (and arguably, paradoxically) incorporated into the audience's normal suspension of disbelief.

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Examples of breaking the fourth wall include the following:

Theater

  • In ancient Greek comedy, the chorus would sometimes address the audience and give them reasons to give the play first prize. An example is Aristophanes' The Birds, in which the chorus of birds threaten to defecate on the heads of audience members if they vote for another play.
  • Many of the plays of William Shakespeare have characters that will occasionally address the audience. In some cases, a chorus exists in the performance to do the same thing. Most of his plays also end with an epilogue in which one of the lead characters will make some final comments on the play or make requests of the audience.
  • In William Gillette's Sherlock Holmes, the character Holmes is supposed to be sealed in a box. He taps the walls of the "box", including the fourth wall, where sound effects are supplied offstage to indicate the solidity of this imaginary wall.
  • Bertolt Brecht's alienation, or Verfremdungseffekt, was intended to constantly remind the audience that they were watching a show, with the idea that their response would be more thoughtful.
  • In Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, the fourth wall is not even there to be broken down. Some actors are getting ready for rehearsal when six characters whose author has died, leaving them incomplete, enter the room. The director decides to include the characters in the play they are rehearsing and soon all the lines between fiction and reality have disappeared.
  • The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) is another example of a performance where the fourth wall is virtually nonexistent. The actors (who play themselves rather than specific characters) address the audience throughout the entire play, and audience is directly involved in the show at certain points.
  • In A.R. Gurney's The Fourth Wall, a quartet of characters deal with housewife Peggy's obsession with a blank wall in her house, slowly being drawn into a series of theater clichés as the furniture and action on the stage become more and more directed to the supposed fourth wall.
  • In Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker, Malachi Stack, a fifty-year-old alcoholic ne'er-do-well, finds a wallet loaded with money - and returns it. As he starts offstage to return the wallet to its owner, he turns to the audience and says, "You're surprised?"

Radio and television

  • The Pirandello play was parodied in a Goon Show episode entitled "Six Charlies in Search of an Author", in which the characters seize the typewriter from one another to write in miraculous escapes, suddenly acquired weapons, descriptions of their own bravery, and the like. All of the Goon Show plots alternated between honoring the fourth wall and breaking it.
  • Moonlighting regularly broke the fourth wall, often including dialogue that made direct reference to the scriptwriters, the audience, the network or the series itself. Sometimes, but not always, a character directly faced or pointed to the camera when breaking the wall. In the show's final episode, the lead characters returned to their office to find a network executive who told them they'd been cancelled as the sets were dismantled by studio crews.
  • In the television show It's Garry Shandling's Show, the fourth wall was virtually nonexistent with Garry Shandling repeatedly addressing the audience during the show.
  • A number of police and detective series broke the fourth wall briefly in order to better involve the audience in the episodes. Examples include early seasons of the 1962-1969 series, The Saint, Decoy and the mid-1970s series, Ellery Queen. In the case of Ellery Queen, the fourth wall was broken to allow the titular character to directly invite the audience to help solve the mystery (a gimmick held over from the radio version of the series).
  • In the Family Guy episode "8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter", right before the first commercial break, Peter Griffin addresses the audience by saying, "More Family Guy coming up." Then at the end of the episode, he gives a teaser about the next episode (which, ironically, is not the plot of the next episode).
  • In Garfield and Friends, Garfield or one of the characters from U.S. Acres frequently addresses the audience. (One quote from Garfield: "Don't try this at home, we're professionals... and also, we're cartoon characters.") Some episodes even center around things going on backstage, such as "Invasion of the Big Robots" (in which Garfield finds himself in a cartoon remniscient of mecha shows like Transformers and Mazinger Z), "Mistakes Will Happen" (Garfield and Odie watch an episode littered with deliberate bloopers), and "Star Struck" (Garfield tries to write an action-packed episode himself).
  • In certain Pokémon episodes, Team Rocket remember that they're characters in a cartoon. For example, at the end of "Electric Shock Showdown", James realizes, "Drat! We wasted this episode cheering the good guys!"
  • In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Storyteller", the character Andrew Wells breaks the fourth wall by presenting the audience with the show's events from his perspective. "Come with me now, if you will, gentle viewers. Join me on a new voyage of the mind. A little tale I like to call... Buffy, Slayer of the Vampyrs."
  • The main character of the 90's TV series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air commonly broke the fourth wall, acting confused when the character Nicky aged several years over the course of three month, or describing a character named Omar as "the dude who be spinning me over his head in the opening credits". Another gag included another character running from one room to another; the rooms being geographically nowhere near each other.

Literature

  • Michael Ende's novel The Neverending Story is initially about a boy reading a fantasy novel, also called The Neverending Story. The characters in the inner novel gradually learn about their fictional nature and about the identity of the reader in the framing story, who himself becomes an active participant in the fantasy world. The film based on the novel takes this a stage further and as we see the young child (who is portrayed reading the novel and imagining the action that is then portrayed in the film) the voice-over of one of the characters in the novel says that they "are aware that someone is watching our adventures, just as the one watching us are themselves watched by others" (i.e. the audiences in the film theatre).
  • Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles breaks the fourth wall in an indirect way. Several of the early volumes are from the viewpoint of a specific character. In later volumes other characters state that they are writing the later volume to "correct" an earlier volume's misrepresentations, or to chastise the first character for revealing the existence of vampires by publishing the earlier volume.
  • The Marvel Comics graphic novel character She-Hulk has in certain stories had the ability to know that she is a comic book character, allowing her to perform such oddities as tearing through the page and running over a page of advertisements in order to reach the otherwise inaccessible control center of an enemy. At one time, she was even arguing with the author of her comic, John Byrne.

Film

  • Another early example are the 1940s and on Road movies, where Bob Hope and Bing Crosby would often make comic asides to the camera, such as saying, "At our age? Paramount wouldn't dare!"
  • French director Jean Luc Godard constantly reminded his audience that they were watching films, breaking the fourth wall through character asides, onscreen dialogue concerning story developement, and the use of loud, bold text. His films include Weekend Masculin Feminin and A Woman is a Woman
  • The film Spaceballs features a scene in which the characters solve a problematic situation by renting the movie, seeing how things get resolved, and implementing just that plan.
  • In many animated cartoons, the cartoon characters will suddenly start talking directly to the audience, or encountering a break or tear in the film that the cartoon is being projected upon, or many other ways to remind the audience that they are watching an animated cartoon. Animation director Tex Avery was a pioneer of breaking the fourth wall, and in one of his cartoons, "Big Heel Watha", the main character proclaims at one point "In a cartoon, you can do anything!"
  • In Funny Games by Michael Haneke one of the villains winks at the camera and addresses the audience by asking it questions like "We're not up to feature film length yet. Is that enough? But you want a real ending, with plausible plot development don't you?" He also actively changes the continuity by rewinding the movie using a remote control.
  • In "Alfie" (1966) Michael Caine addresses the audience on many occasions, breaking the fourth wall. The entire film is his narration in 'real time' through the film.
  • In Wayne's World, Wayne and Garth talk to the camera often, and Wayne said that "only me and Garth can talk to the camera."

Video games

  • The Hideo Kojima's video game Metal Gear Solid breaks the fourth wall on several occasions. The character Psycho Mantis is able to "read your mind" by reading the input of the player's controller -- which can be avoided by swapping controller ports -- and also by making comments about other Konami games saved on the memory card. He also demonstrates his telekinesis by making the player's controller vibrate and appears to switch off the television screen at crucial points during the battle with him. During a torture sequence in which health is gained back by rapidly pressing a button on the controller, Revolver Ocelot tells you he'll know if you use a controller with an auto-fire function. One character tells the main character, Solid Snake to look at the back of the game's CD case to find a certain character's radio frequency.
  • The entire premise of the computer game Omikron is to break the fourth wall. According to the game, the player character is actually the player himself or herself, whose soul has been sucked into the game world by the game, where it exists as a ghost-like entity capable of possessing the game's characters. Defeat in the game world means losing your soul in the real world (although, in reality, you can always reload from a saved game).
  • In the video game Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, when your sanity meter in the game drops or becomes completely empty, some of the sanity effects include things that break the fourth wall, such as the game pretending to erase your save files, or appearing to turn off your screen.

See also

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