Breaking the Fourth Wall

"There can't be new people. They'd have been there in the season premiere." Just listen close to Denny's or Alan's offhand, non-plot-relevant dialogue. While it's more like nudging the fourth wall than breaking it, it's definitely based in the show being a show. Not quite once an episode, but as the series goes on, they do have several such lines.

 

Max Payne does this. More for comedic purposes I think (and I mean the games, not the movie).
At one point while his hallucinating he picks up the phone and hears, "Wake up Max, you're in a game!" And Max say's to himself something along the lines of: "So that's why those gun stats are floating in the air."
...wait is that breaking the fourth wall? I guess it's not really talking to the audience, just reminding the gamer they are playing a game.

 

If the game reminds the player that they're playing a game, if the book reminds the reader that they're reading a book, if the movie reminds the audience that they're watching a movie, then they've broken the fourth wall.

Eternal Darkness took a dark spin on this idea once- if you're far enough into insanity, the game will occasionally lock up and drop a "To be continued in the sequel" screen on you. Your character will recover quickly, but it still fractures the fourth wall. Of course, the game is all about messing with the player- bugs occasionally crawl across the screen, the volume control can scroll up or down, occasionally you'll try to save and it will instead claim to be deleting your save file.

 

speaking of video games there is an entire level in metal gear solid 2 when your being hounded over the codec by a robotic voice telling you to put down the controller or that you've been playing too long. Even in metal gear solid one one of the boss fights requires you to physically change the port of the controller so that the enemy can't "read your mind".

 

Thats pretty neat. I'm motivated now to spot such instances of breaking the 4th wall. I'd even like to try it out, although I imagine there are certian times to use it and certian times not to.

 

If it doesn't serve to enhance the text in some way, there's no point in anything we write. In the case of the Hope/Crosby "Road" films, calling on the special effects department to get them out of a mess enhanced the text by its comic effect. In The Real Inspector Hound, the theatre critics in the audience becoming part of the plot also had comic effect but also added another, unexpected, layer of complexity. There are plenty of reasons to do it, although I agree that (like everything else in writing) it shouldn't be done just for the sake of it. When, in A Season in the West Piers Paul Reed starts discussing how every author has to be in love with his heroine I find it an unfortunate distraction in an otherwise good book.

 

those BL references do not = 'breaking the fourth wall'... they're merely humorous mentions by the characters of their being characters in a show... they're not addressing the audience, which is what the term means...

 

Actually, I would argue that they are breaking the fourth wall, which goes beyond meaning just addressing the audience and encompasses all acknowledgement of the world beyond the text. Their metacognition is a type of metafiction, which is often referred to in broad, layman's terms as "breaking the fourth wall".

 

Anyone remember the TV show Duckman? Watch the first 1:30 of this episode and tell me if there could be a more direct way to smash that wall:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkmtqjG8AAA&feature=related

 

Has anyone seen the film 'FUNNY GAMES'? There is an English language remake recently if you don't like subtitles, but this entire film wanted to make the audience uncomfortable. Its a horror film, but with intelligence. Its about killers with no motive. The director asked the victims to play the parts like a tradegy and the killers to play it like a comedy. The killers are in control of the film and they talk to you throughout, asking you what you think, you are in fact their accomplice to their crimes. Its a film that deconstructs voilence and how it is used for entertainment value.

 

Yay for Hanneke! But yeah, definitely a good example of metafiction.