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The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this "wall", the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th century onward, the rise of illusionism in staging practices, which culminated in the realism and naturalism of the theatre of the 19th century, led to the development of the fourth wall concept. The
metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide, or obscure, clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are usually meant to cr ...
suggests a relationship to the mise-en-scène behind a proscenium arch. When a scene is set indoors and three of the walls of its room are presented onstage, in what is known as a
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, the fourth of them would run along the line (technically called the
proscenium A proscenium (, ) is the virtual vertical plane of space in a theatre, usually surrounded on the top and sides by a physical proscenium arch (whether or not truly "arched") and on the bottom by the stage floor itself, which serves as the frame ...
) dividing the room from the
auditorium An auditorium is a room built to enable an audience to hear and watch performances. For movie theaters, the number of auditoriums is expressed as the number of screens. Auditoriums can be found in entertainment venues, community halls, and t ...
. The ''fourth wall'', though, is a theatrical convention, rather than of set design. The actors ignore the audience, focus their attention exclusively on the dramatic world, and remain absorbed in its fiction, in a state that the theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski called "public solitude" (the ability to behave as one would in private, despite, in actuality, being watched intently while so doing, or to be "alone in public"). In this way, the fourth wall exists regardless of the presence of any actual walls in the set, the physical arrangement of the theatre building or performance space, or the actors' distance from or proximity to the audience. In practice, performers often feed off the energy of the audience in a palpable way while modulating performance around the collective response, especially in pacing action around outbursts of laughter, so that lines are not delivered inaudibly. Breaking the fourth wall is violating this performance convention, which has been adopted more generally in the drama. This can be done by either directly referring to the audience, to the play as a play, or the characters' fictionality. The temporary suspension of the convention in this way draws attention to its use in the rest of the performance. This act of drawing attention to a play's performance conventions is metatheatrical. A similar effect of metareference is achieved when the performance convention of avoiding direct contact with the camera, generally used by actors in a television drama or film, is temporarily suspended. The phrase "breaking the fourth wall" is used to describe such effects in those media. Breaking the fourth wall is also possible in other media, such as
video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...
s and
book A book is a structured presentation of recorded information, primarily verbal and graphical, through a medium. Originally physical, electronic books and audiobooks are now existent. Physical books are objects that contain printed material, ...
s.


History

The acceptance of the transparency of the fourth wall is part of the
suspension of disbelief Suspension of disbelief is the avoidance—often described as willing—of critical thinking and logic in understanding something that is unreal or impossible in reality, such as something in a work of speculative fiction, in order to believe i ...
between a work of fiction and an audience, allowing them to enjoy the fiction as though they were observing real events. The concept is usually attributed to the philosopher, critic and dramatist
Denis Diderot Denis Diderot (; ; 5 October 171331 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a prominent figure during th ...
, who wrote in 1758 that actors and writers should "imagine a huge wall across the front of the stage, separating you from the audience, and behave exactly as if the curtain had never risen". Critic
Vincent Canby Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who was the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in 2000. ...
described it in 1987 as "that invisible scrim that forever separates the audience from the stage". Diderot's "un grand mur" became "the fourth wall" to
Leigh Hunt James Henry Leigh Hunt (19 October 178428 August 1859), best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist and poet. Hunt co-founded '' The Examiner'', a leading intellectual journal expounding radical principles. He was the centre ...
when in 1807 referring to Mr. Bannister, wrote: *No actor enters so well into the spirit of his audience as well as his author, for he engages your attention immediately by seeming to care nothing about you ; the stage appears to be his own room, of which the audience compose the fourth wall. In the late nineteenth century the concept of the fourth wall is also called "fourth wall theory" possibly arising from an article by
Henry Irving Sir Henry Irving (6 February 1838 – 13 October 1905), christened John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. Irving, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility ( ...
in February 1879 explaining a stage device used in a production of Hamlet: *It should never be forgotten that the stage has four walls, though the fourth is only theoretical, and I believe it to be in every sense advantageous that the audience should be left to imagine, if they like, either that the pictures are on this fourth wall, or that Hamlet is painting them from his imagination. Whichever view be adopted, the result then is that the mind is concentrated upon the impressive language of the poet, instead of being diverted from it by some mechanical device. The first known use of "fourth wall theory" follows later that month in a comment on that article in the Glasgow Times.


Theatre

The fourth wall did not exist as a concept for much of dramatic history. Classical plays from
ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...
to the Renaissance have frequent direct addresses to the audience such as asides and soliloquies. The presence of the fourth wall is an established convention of modern realistic theatre, which has led some artists to draw direct attention to it for dramatic or comic effect when a boundary is "broken" when an actor or character addresses the audience directly. Breaking the fourth wall is common in
pantomime Pantomime (; informally panto) is a type of musical comedy stage production designed for family entertainment, generally combining gender-crossing actors and topical humour with a story more or less based on a well-known fairy tale, fable or ...
and children's theatre where, for example, a character might ask the children for help, as when Peter Pan appeals to the audience to applaud in an effort to revive the fading Tinker Bell ("If you believe in fairies, clap your hands!").


Cinema

One of the earliest recorded breakings of the fourth wall in serious cinema was in Mary MacLane's 1918 silent film '' Men Who Have Made Love to Me'', in which the enigmatic author – who portrays herself – interrupts the vignettes onscreen to address the audience directly. Oliver Hardy often broke the fourth wall in his films with
Stan Laurel Stan Laurel ( ; born Arthur Stanley Jefferson; 16 June 1890 – 23 February 1965) was an English comic actor, director and writer who was in the comedy double act, duo Laurel and Hardy. He appeared with his comedy partner Oliver Hardy in 107 sh ...
, when he would stare directly at the camera to seek sympathy from viewers.
Groucho Marx Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx (; October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977) was an American comedian, actor, writer, and singer who performed in films and vaudeville on television, radio, and the stage. He is considered one of America's greatest comed ...
spoke directly to the audience in '' Animal Crackers'' (1930), and '' Horse Feathers'' (1932), in the latter film advising them to "go out to the lobby" during Chico Marx's piano interlude. Comedy films by
Mel Brooks Melvin James Brooks (né Kaminsky; born June 28, 1926) is an American actor, comedian, filmmaker, and songwriter. With a career spanning over seven decades, he is known as a writer and director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodie ...
, Monty Python, and Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker frequently broke the fourth wall, such that with these films "the fourth wall is so flimsy and so frequently shattered that it might as well not exist", according to '' The A.V. Club''.
Woody Allen Heywood Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American filmmaker, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades. Allen has received many List of awards and nominations received by Woody Allen, accolade ...
broke the fourth wall repeatedly in his movie ''
Annie Hall ''Annie Hall'' is a 1977 American satirical romantic comedy-drama film directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay written by Allen and Marshall Brickman, and produced by Allen's manager, Charles H. Joffe. The film stars Allen as Alvy Singer ...
'' (1977), as he explained, "because I felt many of the people in the audience had the same feelings and the same problems. I wanted to talk to them directly and confront them." His 1985 film '' The Purple Rose of Cairo'' features the breaking of the fourth wall as a central plot point.
Jerry Lewis Jerry Lewis (born Joseph Levitch; March 16, 1926 – August 20, 2017) was an American comedian, actor, singer, filmmaker and humanitarian, with a career spanning seven decades in film, stage, television and radio. Famously nicknamed as "Th ...
wrote in his 1971 book ''The Total Filmmaker'', "Some film-makers believe you should never have an actor look directly into the camera. They maintain it makes the audience uneasy, and interrupts the screen story. I think that is nonsense, and usually I have my actors, in a single, look direct into the camera at least once in a film, if a point is to be served." Martin and Lewis look directly at the audience in ''You're Never Too Young'' (1955), and Lewis and co-star Stella Stevens each look directly into the camera several times in '' The Nutty Professor'' (1963), and Lewis' character holds a pantomime conversation with the audience in '' The Disorderly Orderly'' (1964). The final scene of '' The Patsy'' (1964) is famous for revealing to the audience the movie as a movie, and Lewis as actor/director. The 2022 ''
Persuasion Persuasion or persuasion arts is an umbrella term for influence. Persuasion can influence a person's beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behaviours. Persuasion is studied in many disciplines. Rhetoric studies modes of persuasi ...
'' film was criticized for its modernization take on the classic 1817
Jane Austen Jane Austen ( ; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for #List of works, her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century ...
novel by having the main protagonist Anne Elliot (played by Dakota Johnson) constantly breaking the fourth wall by interacting with the audience. Select theatrical screenings of
Francis Ford Coppola Francis Ford Coppola ( ; born April 7, 1939) is an American filmmaker. He is considered one of the leading figures of the New Hollywood and one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. List of awards and nominations received by Francis Ford Coppo ...
's 2024 science fiction epic ''
Megalopolis A megalopolis () or a supercity, also called a megaregion, is a group of metropolitan areas which are perceived as a continuous urban area through common systems of transport, economy, resources, ecology, and so on. They are integrated enough ...
'', including its private industry screenings and world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, had a person walk on stage in front of the projection screen and address the protagonist, Cesar, who seemingly breaks the fourth wall by replying in real time.


Television

On television, the fourth wall has broken throughout the history of the medium. Fourth wall breakage is common in comedy, and is used frequently by
Bugs Bunny Bugs Bunny is a cartoon character created in the late 1930s at Warner Bros. Cartoons (originally Leon Schlesinger, Leon Schlesinger Productions) and Voice acting, voiced originally by Mel Blanc. Bugs is best known for his featured roles in the ' ...
and other characters in ''
Looney Tunes ''Looney Tunes'' is an American media franchise produced and distributed by Warner Bros. The franchise began as a series of animated short films that originally ran from 1930 to 1969, alongside its spin-off series ''Merrie Melodies'', during t ...
'' and other later animated shows, as well as the live-action 1960s sketch comedy of '' Monty Python's Flying Circus'', which the troupe also brought to their feature films. With animated characters, this typically involves pretending that the characters are played by real actors, rather than acknowledging their true nature as animated drawings. George Burns regularly broke the fourth wall on '' The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show'' (1950). Another convention of breaking the fourth wall is often seen on
mockumentary A mockumentary (a portmanteau of ''mock'' and ''documentary'') is a type of film or television show depicting fictional events, but presented as a Documentary film, documentary. Mockumentaries are often used to analyze or comment on current event ...
sitcoms, including '' The Office''. Mockumentary shows that break the fourth wall poke fun at the documentary genre with the intention of increasing the satiric tone of the show. Characters in '' The Office'' directly speak to the audience during interview sequences. Characters are removed from the rest of the group to speak and reflect on their experiences. The person behind the camera, the interviewer, is also referenced when the characters gaze and speak straight to the camera. The interviewer, however, is only indirectly spoken to and remains hidden. This technique, when used in shows with complex genres, serves to heighten the comic tone of the show while also proving that the camera itself is far from a passive onlooker. Another approach to breaking the fourth wall is through a central narrator character who is part of the show's events, but at times speaks directly to the audience. For example, Francis Urquhart in the British TV drama series '' House of Cards'', '' To Play the King'' and '' The Final Cut'' addresses the audience several times during each episode, giving the viewer comments on his own actions on the show. The same technique is also used, though less frequently, in the American adaptation of '' House of Cards'' by main character Frank Underwood. The
Netflix Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...
series ''
A Series of Unfortunate Events ''A Series of Unfortunate Events'' is a series of thirteen Children's literature, children's novels written by American author Daniel Handler under the pen name Lemony Snicket. The books follow the turbulent lives of orphaned siblings List of A ...
'', based on Daniel Handler's book series of the same name, incorporates some of the narrative elements from the books by having Lemony Snicket as a narrator character (played by Patrick Warburton) speaking directly to the television viewer that frequently breaks the fourth wall to explain various literary wordplay in a manner similar to the book's narration. The protagonist of '' Fleabag'' also frequently uses the technique to provide exposition, internal monologues, and a running commentary to the audience. Every episode of the sitcom '' Saved by the Bell'' breaks the fourth wall during the introduction by the character Zack Morris. Most episodes have several other fourth wall breaks. This is similar to how '' The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air'', '' Clarissa Explains It All'' and ''
Malcolm in the Middle ''Malcolm in the Middle'' is an American television sitcom created by Linwood Boomer for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series premiered on January 9, 2000, and ended on May 14, 2006, after seven seasons consisting of 151 episodes. The ...
'' use fourth wall breaks to set up stories or have characters comment on situations. Showtime's Shameless has a main character breaking the fourth wall at every episode beginning to deliberately criticize and threaten the viewers to emphasize the morally deficient plots and characters likely in an deliberate attempt to turn away any naïve viewers to maintain the exclusiveness of the series, only to add to its popularity. Furthermore, breaking the fourth wall can also be used in meta-referencing in order to draw attention to or invite reflection about a specific in-universe issue. An example of this is in the first episode of the final season of the show ''Attack on Titan'', where a newly introduced character, Falco Grice, starts to hallucinate about events that took place in the last 3 seasons. This literary device utilises self-referencing to trigger media-awareness in the recipient, used to signpost the drastic shift in perspective from the Eldian to the Marleyan side, and can be employed in all sorts of media. The use of breaking the fourth wall in television has sometimes been unintentional. In the ''
Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series, created by Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber and Donald Wilson (writer and producer), Donald Wilson, depicts the adventures of an extraterre ...
'' episode " The Caves of Androzani", the character of Morgus looks directly at the camera when thinking aloud. This was due to actor John Normington misunderstanding a stage direction, but the episode's director, Graeme Harper, felt that this helped increase dramatic tension, and decided not to reshoot the scenes.
Interactive Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but mo ...
children's show characters also commonly break the fourth wall to "help" the audience with the episodes of the shows.


Video games

Given their interactive nature, nearly all video games break the fourth wall by asking for the player's participation and having
user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...
elements on the screen (such as explanations of the game's controls) that address the player rather than their character. Methods of fourth wall breaking within the narrative include having the character face the direction of the player/screen, having a self-aware character that recognizes that they are in a video game, or having secret or bonus content set outside the game's narrative that can either extend the game world (such as with the use of false documents) or provide "behind the scenes" type content. Such cases typically create a video game that includes a
metafiction Metafiction is a form of fiction that emphasizes its own narrative structure in a way that inherently reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and story ...
narrative, commonly presently characters in the game incorporating knowledge they are in a video game. For example, in '' Doki Doki Literature Club!'', one of the characters named Monika is aware that she is a part of a video game, and at the end, communicates with the player. To progress further in the story, the player must remove the “monika.chr” file (an action they take outside of the game). The plot of the game '' OneShot'' revolves around the fictional universe of the game being a
simulation A simulation is an imitative representation of a process or system that could exist in the real world. In this broad sense, simulation can often be used interchangeably with model. Sometimes a clear distinction between the two terms is made, in ...
running on the player's computer, with certain characters being aware of this fact and sometimes communicating directly with the player. In other cases of metafictional video games, the game alters the player's expectation of how the game should behave, which may make the player question if their own game system is at fault, helping to increase the immersion of the game. But since video games are inherently much more interactive than traditional films and literature, defining what truly breaks the fourth wall in the video game medium becomes difficult. Steven Conway, writing for '' Gamasutra'', suggests that in video games, many purported examples of breaking the fourth wall are actually better understood as ''relocations'' of the fourth wall or expansions of the " magic circle" (the fictional game world) to encompass the player. This is in contrast to traditional fourth wall breaks, which break the audience's illusion or
suspension of disbelief Suspension of disbelief is the avoidance—often described as willing—of critical thinking and logic in understanding something that is unreal or impossible in reality, such as something in a work of speculative fiction, in order to believe i ...
, by acknowledging them directly. Conway argues that this expansion of the magic circle in video games actually serves to more fully immerse a player into the fictional world rather than take the viewer out of the fictional world, as is more common in traditional fourth wall breaks. An example of this expansion of the magic circle can be found in the game '' Evidence: The Last Ritual'', in which the player receives an in-game email at their real-life email address and must visit out-of-game websites to solve some of the puzzles in the game. Other games may expand the magic circle to include the game's hardware. For example, ''
X-Men The X-Men are a superhero team in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer/editor Stan Lee and artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby, the team first appeared in Uncanny X-Men, ''The X-Men'' #1 (September 1963). Although initial ...
'' for the Mega Drive/Genesis requires players to reset their game console at a certain point to reset the X-Men's in-game Hazard Room, while '' Metal Gear Solid'' asks the player to put the
DualShock The DualShock (originally Dual Shock, trademarked as DUALSHOCK or DUAL SHOCK, with the PlayStation 5 version as DualSense) is a line of gamepads developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment (formerly Sony Computer Entertainment) for the PlaySta ...
controller on their neck to simulate a back massage being given in-game. Other examples include the idle animation of
Sonic the Hedgehog is a video game series and media franchise created by the Japanese developers Yuji Naka, Naoto Ohshima, and Hirokazu Yasuhara for Sega. The franchise follows Sonic the Hedgehog (character), Sonic, an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog who battle ...
in his games where the on-screen character would look to the player and tap his foot impatiently if left alone for a while, and one level of '' Max Payne'' has the eponymous character come to the realization he and other characters are in a video game and narrates what the player sees as part of the UI. '' Eternal Darkness'', which included a sanity meter, would simulate various common computer glitches to the player as the sanity meter drained, including the
Blue Screen of Death The blue screen of death (BSoD) or blue screen error, blue screen, fatal error, bugcheck, and officially known as a stop erroris a fatal system error, critical error screen displayed by the Microsoft Windows operating systems to indicate a cr ...
. '' The Stanley Parable'' is also a well-known example of this, as the narrator from the game constantly tries to reason with the player, even going so far as to beg the player to switch off the game at one point.


Literature

The method of breaking the fourth wall in literature is a metalepsis (the transgression of narrative levels), which is a technique often used in
metafiction Metafiction is a form of fiction that emphasizes its own narrative structure in a way that inherently reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and story ...
. The metafiction genre occurs when a character within a literary work acknowledges the reality that they are in fact a fictitious being. The use of the fourth wall in literature can be traced back as far as '' The Canterbury Tales'' and ''
Don Quixote , the full title being ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'', is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, the novel is considered a founding work of Western literature and is of ...
''. ''
Northanger Abbey ''Northanger Abbey'' ( ) is a coming-of-age novel and a satire of Gothic fiction, Gothic novels written by the English author Jane Austen. Although the title page is dated 1818 and the novel was published posthumously in 1817 with ''Persuasio ...
'' is a late modern era example. It was popularized in the early 20th century during the Post-Modern literary movement. Artists like
Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Vir ...
in '' To the Lighthouse'' and
Kurt Vonnegut Kurt Vonnegut ( ; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American author known for his Satire, satirical and darkly humorous novels. His published work includes fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfict ...
in '' Breakfast of Champions'' used the genre to question the accepted knowledge and sources of the culture. The use of metafiction or breaking the fourth wall in literature varies from that on stage in that the experience is not communal but personal to the reader and develops a self-consciousness within the character/reader relationship that works to build trust and expand thought. This does not involve an acknowledgment of a character's fictive nature. Breaking the fourth wall in literature is not always metafiction. Modern examples of breaking the fourth wall include Ada Palmer's ''Terra Ignota'', and William Goldman's '' The Princess Bride''. Sorj Chalandon wrote a novel called "The 4th wall" of the setting-up of a theatrical performance of Antigone in Beirut, while the civil war is raging.


See also

* Aside * Audience participation *
Breaking character In theatre (especially in the illusionistic Western tradition) and film, breaking character occurs when an actor fails to maintain the illusion that they are the character they are supposedly portraying. This is considered unprofessional while ...
* Kubrick stare * List of narrative techniques * Meta-reference * Violation of abstraction level


References

{{Reflist, 30em Metafictional techniques Stage terminology Film and video terminology