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A '''[[Wikipedia:metafiction]]al video game''' is a [[Wikipedia:Computer and video games|video game]] that self-consciously addresses the devices of video games.
 
A '''[[Wikipedia:metafiction]]al video game''' is a [[Wikipedia:Computer and video games|video game]] that self-consciously addresses the devices of video games.
  

Latest revision as of 11:06, 4 July 2012

Content on this subject has been deleted on Wikipedia, from the Wikipedia:Fourth wall article

The fourth wall is the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage in a traditional three-walled box set in a proscenium theatre (WP), through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play.[1][2] The idea of the fourth wall was made explicit by philosopher and critic Wikipedia:Denis Diderot and spread in Wikipedia:nineteenth-century theatre with the advent of theatrical realism,[3] which extended the idea to the imaginary boundary between any fictional work and its audience. Speaking directly to or otherwise acknowledging the audience through the camera in a film or television program, or through this imaginary wall in a play, is referred to as "breaking the fourth wall" and is considered a technique of Wikipedia:metafiction, as it deconstructs the boundaries normally set up by works of fiction.[1][4] This should not be confused with the Wikipedia:aside, a dramatic device often used by playwrights where the character on stage is delivering an inner monologue, giving the audience insight into his or her thoughts.

The term was made explicit by Wikipedia:Denis Diderot[5] and spread in Wikipedia:nineteenth century theatre with the advent of theatrical realism. Critic Wikipedia:Vincent Canby described it in 1987 as "that invisible screen that forever separates the audience from the stage."[6] Another among early practitioners of this method (now referred to as the "Fourth Wall") is Wikipedia:Thornton Wilder & his 1937 play "Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:theatre and cinema, the term has been adopted by other media, such as Wikipedia:television, Wikipedia:comics, and more recently, Wikipedia:video games. Though some table-top Wikipedia:roleplaying games do allow for breaking the fourth wall, these are usually beer and pretzel type games.

Convention of modern theatre[edit]

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 comedic effect when this boundary is "broken", for example by an actor onstage speaking to the audience directly.

The acceptance of the transparency of the fourth wall is part of the Wikipedia:suspension of disbelief between a fictional work and an audience, allowing them to enjoy the fiction as if they were observing real events.[2] Although the critic Wikipedia:Vincent Canby described it in 1987 as "that invisible screen that forever separates the audience from the stage,"[7] postmodern art forms frequently either do away with it entirely, or make use of various framing devices to manipulate it in order to emphasize or de-emphasize certain aspects of the production, according to the artistic desires of the work's creator.

In literature[edit]

The term "fourth wall" has been used by critic Wikipedia:David Barnett about Wikipedia:Harvard Lampoon's Wikipedia:parody of Wikipedia:The Lord of the Rings—"Wikipedia:Bored of the Rings" when a character breaks the conventions of storytelling by referring to the text itself. The character Frito observes "it was going to be a long epic", which in Barnett's view "breaks the 'fourth wall'".[8]

In art[edit]

The metaphor of the fourth wall has been used by the actor Sir Wikipedia:Ian McKellen with regard to the work of the painter Wikipedia:L. S. Lowry:

"Lowry... stood across the road from his subjects and observed. Often enough there are a number of individuals in a crowd peering back at him. They invite us momentarily into their world, like characters on a stage sometimes do, breaking the fourth-wall illusion..."[9]


Breaking the fourth wall[edit]

Theatre[edit]

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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:William Shakespeare's plays, which frequently feature Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:Laurence Olivier's 1955 film adaptation of Richard III, Olivier addresses the audience directly, a ground breaking technique in film.

McKellen justifies this application of the theatre term to Lowry's art by explaining that "Lowry’s mid-air viewpoint is like a view from the dress circle", looking down as if to a stage. And, McKellen argues, Lowry "often marks the limits of the street scene with curbstones or a pavement that feel like the edge of the stage where the footlights illuminate the action."[9]

A notable case of Wikipedia:Shakespeare breaking the fourth wall is the end of Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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. Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:Francis Beaumont's play Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:meta-reference or Wikipedia:breaking character. From the early days of sound motion pictures, stage-to-screen productions often broke this barrier, especially those of the Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:Cinderella who has been locked in the basement by the Ugly Sisters.


Film[edit]

[[Wikipedia:Image:Funnygamesgerman.JPG|300px|thumb|Paul (Arno Frisch) smirks at the audience in the film Funny Games, which frequently breaks the fourth wall.]] In their 1932 film Wikipedia: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." [10] Bob Hope, who also frequently addressed the audience, uses a similar gag in Wikipedia: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.

The 1966 film Modesty Blaise breaks the fourth wall by showing the Wikipedia:Modesty Blaise comic strip magazine on which the film is based.

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

The 1988 film Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:Blazing Saddles to various characters referencing the movie script in Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:Austin Powers series, the character of Austin (played by Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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, Wikipedia:Woody Allen's Wikipedia:Annie Hall (with Wikipedia:Marshall McLuhan) and Wikipedia:The Purple Rose of Cairo, Wikipedia:Last Action Hero and Jonathan Gash's Wikipedia:Lovejoy novels. Both Peter Pan and Wikipedia:Captain Hook break the fourth wall in the 1954 musical adaptation of Peter Pan. More recently, in Wikipedia:The Simpsons Movie, Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:anime films also occasionally break the fourth wall. At the end of Wikipedia: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, Wikipedia:Meowth breaks the fourth wall when he comments "Maybe we'll get a bigger part in the next movie."

In Wikipedia: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[edit]

The fourth wall has also been broken in literature such as Wikipedia:The Master and Margarita by Wikipedia:Mikhail Bulgakov,[11] Wikipedia:Don Quixote by Wikipedia:Miguel de Cervantes, Wikipedia:Lost in the Funhouse by Wikipedia:John Barth, Wikipedia:Midnight's Children and Wikipedia:The Moor's Last Sigh by Wikipedia:Salman Rushdie, Wikipedia:Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote by Wikipedia:Jorge Luis Borges, Wikipedia:Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Wikipedia:Tom Stoppard, Wikipedia:If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Wikipedia:Italo Calvino, Wikipedia:Travelling People by Wikipedia:B.S. Johnson, Double or Nothing by Wikipedia:Raymond Federman, Wikipedia:The Name of the Rose by Wikipedia:Umberto Eco, Wikipedia:Breakfast of Champions by Wikipedia:Kurt Vonnegut, and Wikipedia:The French Lieutenant's Woman by Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:Jane Austen's Wikipedia: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[edit]

Comics can occasionally break the fourth wall, as Marvel Comics characters such as Wikipedia:She-Hulk, and Loki are aware that they are comic book characters. In the Wikipedia:Marvel Comics of the 1960s, Wikipedia:Stan Lee's style of writing regularly broke the fourth wall when writing captions and narration. The Marvel character Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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. Wikipedia:Animal Man has broken the fourth wall by actually confronting the then-writer of his book, Wikipedia: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", Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:Bastard‼: Heavy Metal, Dark Fantasy, the characters occasionally give indications that they know they are in a manga.

Television[edit]

Wikipedia:George Burns commonly addressed the audience in his 1950s TV comedy show, and sometimes even watched it on TV in another room.[12] Partly inspired by Burns, in 1986 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:Looney Tunes cartoons have been known to break the fourth wall. The award-winning cartoon Wikipedia:Duck Amuck, for example, breaks the fourth-wall for the entire running-time, with Wikipedia:Daffy Duck arguing with the off-screen animator (Wikipedia:Bugs Bunny) throughout the cartoon. In Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:latitude and Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:I Married Dora starring Wikipedia: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.

Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:reality shows such as Wikipedia:The Real World, breaking the fourth wall can refer to a direct interaction between the cast and crew. Malcolm in Wikipedia:Malcolm in the Middle often breaks the fourth wall by talking to the audience as the other characters are unaware of this. Wikipedia:Better off Ted also does this throughout the episodes, the same way Wikipedia:Malcom in the Middle does it.

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

Recent Wikipedia:Honda television ads have featured Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:Saved by The Bell, the character of Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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 there Own Spin-Off show, Plotline or complain about how they don't get enough Screen time (Or Even no Screen time at all) and even 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 to get on with the Preview but it often turns out they are out of time, A Noticeable example being Gin Ichimaru, who often talks about 'screen time' that other characters are due to get in coming episodes (or lack thereof).

Video games[edit]

An article on this subject was deleted on Wikipedia:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/
Metafictional video games
WP administrators can restore the edit history
of this page upon request 		WP+
DEL

A Wikipedia:metafictional video game is a video game that self-consciously addresses the devices of video games.

In the video game Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:Super Paper Mario, when Bestovius gives Wikipedia: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." Mario is able to visit a casino, in which he can play different video games. In the Wikipedia:Gamecube game Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:PlayStation video game Wikipedia:WWF Attitude, Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:Tony Hawks Pro Skater, which read "Now get off your couch and go skate!". In Wikipedia:Earthbound & Mother 3, the players are asked to write their names down. In earthbound, the player ends up dealing the finishing blow on the final boss (sorta), & in Wikipedia:Mother 3, the Rope snake says that thanks to Duster, he is now a major character in the story.

In the Wikipedia:Super Nintendo game Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:Smackdown vs Raw 2010 during the create-a-superstar storyline Wikipedia: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.

Misconceptions[edit]

The fourth wall is not being broken anytime a character is talking to the audience, despite common misconceptions to the contrary. In a Wikipedia:mockumentary (like Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia:soliloquy in plays: the actors are facing the audience but the characters are just talking to themselves while looking at nothing in particular.

Wikipedia:Point of view shots that show an actor looking directly into the camera are rare in film, but quite common in Wikipedia:video games. As in cutscenes from the Wikipedia:Command & Conquer series, for example, characters are speaking directly to the player, but the normal ingame Wikipedia:first person shooter perspective of the player "acting" as another character remains in effect. Thus the shot is read by the audience as the performers are speaking to the game Wikipedia:player character (PC), and only through that PC, to the real-life player.


Fifth wall[edit]

Main article: Wikipedia:Fifth wall

The term "fifth wall" has been used as an extension of the fourth wall concept to refer to the "invisible wall between critics or readers and theatre practitioners."[13] This conception led to a series of workshops at the Globe Theatre in 2004 designed to help break the fifth wall.[14] The term has also been used to refer to "that semi-porous membrane that stands between individual audience members during a shared experience."[15] In media, the television set has been described metaphorically as a fifth wall because of how it allows a person to see beyond the traditional four walls of a room.[16][17]

In Wikipedia:shadow theatre the term has been used to describe the screen onto which images are projected.[18]


See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Bell, Elizabeth S. (2008), Theories of Performance, Los Angeles: Sage, pp. 203, Template:citation/identifier. </li>
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Wallis, Mick; Shepherd, Simon (1998), Studying plays, London: Arnold, pp. 214, Template:citation/identifier. </li>
  3. ↑ "The Fourth Wall and the Third Space" by John Stevenson, creator or Playback Theatre.
  4. ↑ Abelman, Robert (1998), Reaching a critical mass: a critical analysis of television entertainment, Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, pp. 8–11, Template:citation/identifier. </li>
  5. ↑ "The Fourth Wall and the Third Space" by John Stevenson, creator or Playback Theatre.
  6. ↑ "Film view: sex can spoil the scene;" (review). Canby, Vincent. New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Jun 28, 1987. pg. A.17. ProQuest ISSN: 03624331 ProQuest document ID: 956621781 (subscription). retrieved July 3, 2007
  7. ↑ Canby, Vincent (June 28, 1987), "Film view: sex can spoil the scene", Wikipedia:New York Times: A.17, http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/28/movies/film-view-sex-can-spoil-the-scene.html, retrieved July 3, 2007. </li>
  8. ↑ David Barnett, After Tolkien, get Bored of the Rings, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/feb/08/tolkien-bored-of-the-rings?intcmp=239
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 The Telegraph, 21 April 2011. TV and Radio. Sir Ian McKellen: My lifelong passion for LS Lowry. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8467565/Sir-Ian-McKellen-My-lifelong-passion-for-LS-Lowry.html
  10. ↑ Horse Feathers (1932) - Memorable quotes
  11. ↑ [1]
  12. ↑ "At work with Garry Shandling; Late-Night TV, Ever More Unreal;" [Biography]. Weinraub, Bernard, New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Dec 10, 1992. pg. C.1. Proquest ISSN: 03624331 ProQuest document ID: 965497661 retrieved July 3, 2007.
  13. ↑ Hunte, Lynette; Lichtenfels, Peter (2005), Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage, London: Arden Shakespeare, p. 1, Template:citation/identifier. </li>
  14. ↑ Knowles, Richard Paul (2006), "Shakespeare, Language and the Stage, The Fifth Wall: Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism, Performance and Theatre Studies (review)", Shakespeare Quarterly 57 (2): 235–237, Template:citation/identifier. </li>
  15. ↑ Davenport, G.; Agamanolis, S.; Barry, B.; Bradley, B. & Brooks, K. (2000), "Synergistic storyscapes and constructionist cinematic sharing", IBM Systems Journal. </li>
  16. ↑ Newcomb, Horace (2004), Encyclopedia of Television (2nd ed.), New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, Template:citation/identifier. </li>
  17. ↑ Koepnick, Lutz P. (2007), Framing Attention: Windows on Modern German Culture, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, Template:citation/identifier. </li>
  18. ↑ Kent, Lynne (2005), Breaking the Fifth Wall: Enquiry into Contemporary Shadow Theatre, Queensland University of Technology Creative Industries Faculty. </li> </ol>

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