I notice this in 9 Chickweed Lane and Pibgorn rather frequently and probably in other comics, too: the character in the comic seems to sort of acknowledge the medium that it is inhabiting, e.g., by grabbing or resting on the border of one of the panels bordering the action. But it’s not an explicit acknowledgement of the audience or an overt statement of “hey, I know I’m in a comic strip!” So it’s not “breaking the fourth wall” as I understand it-- is there a name for this device? Does it happen in other media besides comics?
Animated films: Duck Amuck, Out of the Inkwell, and Disney’s Alice in Cartoonland.
It’s still “breaking the fourth wall.”
But this isn’t a case where the characters consciously acknowledge the medium–could it be more like actors dangling their feet off the edge of the stage and talking to each other (poking through the literal “fourth wall”) without acknowledging the audience?
Fourth wall or set design? Is it significantly different in the comics medium?
Spamalot, the Audience Participation scenes, where they have to find a (X), for example. They don’t break character, but they do wander out.
There’s an engraving by Peter Brueghel the Elder there a peasant is pushing his foot against the edge of the frame, which at that point is given a finite width – it’s as if there’s a bar at the edge of a window or stage or exhibit diorama that the scene exists within, and the character is acknowledging it. It sounds just like what the OP describes, and it long predates the comics.
Cartoons sometimes acknowledged that they were artificial media, but usually more explicitly. Besides the Chuck Jones examples cited above, Tex Avery used to do this (characters run past a certain point, and everything changes to black and white. They warily go back and find a sign that says “Technicolor ends here.”). One example that comes close to the OP was when what was apparently a hair caught in the projectoion gate sits in the middle of the frame for a long period of time, jumping around distractingly, until the cartoon character reaches over and yanks it out. It’s a great effect, and was painstakingly animated, but today’s kids wouldn’t know what it was, I’ll bet. Especially if they’re watching it on a DVD.
Order of the Stick does this, too.
(this particular strip is titled “At Least it Wasn’t the Fourth Wall Again”)
Garry Shandling did this sort of thing regularly. Yes, he did the standard breaking of the fourth wall by talking directly to the audience, but he also had other ways of acknowledging he was on a television set. When his character had to drive somewhere, Shandling got into a studio “golf cart” and drove it around the sound stage. Other actors would say things like, “This could be the episode where you marry the housekeeper.”
George Burns would begin his TV show standing outside of the house set, revealing that it was just a set, so he didn’t break the fourth wall as such, he established from the outset that there was none.
One of the knights in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, looking toward Camelot, says “It’s only a model,” and Arthur escapes being eaten by a crudely animated monster when the crude animator suffers a heart attack.
TV Tropes calls this medium awareness. The linked page has examples from anime, comic books, film, literature, TV, video games, and other media. Including, very amusingly, stand up comedy.
That’s a great example of what I was thinking of. It’s not making a point of saying “hee hee, look at us, we’re in a stage play!”, it’s just using the boundaries of the medium to some effect.
In the classic Mad Comic of “Starchie,” two characters are talking on the phone and are shown in a single panel with a lightning-like line separating them. One says, “Where are you?” and the other replies, “On the other side of this jagged separation line, idiot.”
I believe that Pogo did this sort of thing often. There was the Sunday sequence where Bear drew a line in the dirt and created his own comic strip (A comic strip is like a dream," Turtle tells him. “A tissue of paper reveries. It gloms an’ glimmers its way thru unreality, fancy an’ fantasy.”).
There was also **The Sensational She-Hulk ** and Ambush Bug, both of whom knew they were comic book characters. Ambush Bug would often comment on comic conventions and continuity.l
In “Blazing Saddles”, sheriff Bart is riding through the desert with Count Basie’s version of “April in Paris” in the background. As the music comes to an end, it’s revealed that the Count Basie Orchestra is there in the desert playing the music “live” and Basie and Bart acknowledge each other.
Something similar happens in “High Anxiety” when the characters notice that the dramatic soundtrack music is being played by a symphony orchestra in a bus driving next to their car.
Heh. I was going to link to Genre Savvy, but Medium Awareness looks to be more accurate and encompassing of the phenomenon the OP is referencing.
Sounds sorta like what happens in the middle of the movie Gremlins 2, where it appears the film has broken and gremlins have taken over the projection room.
Several comics feature their creator. In Overboard the artist has an office on the ship, and in Pearls before Swind bad puns often get Rat yelling at Pastis.
In 1941, there was Hellzapoppin. The movie proper begins with the writer telling the story, which gets visualized and then animated, and Chic and Ollie then move into it. In the middle, they talk to Shemp Howard who is the projectionist showing the movie. He screws up the vertical hold, which the characters have to deal with. Shemp also mixes up some reels from other movies. Lots of other examples in there also.
Most of the early cinematic cartoons used self-referencing images. Clowns coming out of an ink bottle and then erasing it, that sort of thing.
And the funny papers before that, Krazy Kat etc were always hanging on the panel lines or peeking at the “page below”
As to other media, Shakespeare had lots of asides to the same effect when he had a “play within a play”. Sometimes the lines are directed at the play characters, but sometimes directly at the Elizabethan audience.
Hmmm . . . I’m not sure which play you might be referencing – I don’t think the Player King and others from “The Mouse Trap” (within Hamlet) had any asides?
Here’s a copy of the Brueghel drawing “Summer”, which violates the “frame”, and where the “frame” actually seems to become a tangible bar:
I thought it was the engraving, but the "bar is missing in the engraving – it’s only in his drawing (although the scythe goes outside the frame in the engraving). It’s dated 1568
Woody Allen did the same thing in Bananas: he gets an invitation to dine with the president of a South American country. As he says, “I’m going to meet the president,” you hear a harp in the background. Allen then goes to his closet where there’s a harpist practicing.